Fishhook-Toothed, Fish-Eating White Mouth

My friend Elena recently had to move from California to Texas, I presume because she angered either some California governmental agency or God himself. But don’t feel too bad for her — she actually found a job as docent-slash-dying soldier at the Alamo. (Lots of interesting people! Fresh air!) When I strained to hear through her newfound twang, I heard so many of Elena’s stories about confronting the Texan wildlife. Much like Australia, Texas boasts a whole host crawling, slithering and orifice-penetrating animals that don’t like humans and can eliminate them fairly easily. Perhaps worst among them is the highly venomous snake known variously as the water moccasin, the cottonmouth and, perplexingly, the Congo snake, despite that it lives more in the U.S. and less in the Congo.

(image via backyardnature.net)

Easily the best way to refer to this scaly bringer of death, however, would be its full scientific name, Agkistrodon piscivorus leucostoma. Pronounce it out loud. Don’t you agree? Each segment sounds like the name of a Star Wars villain, a Roman gladiator or a particularly forceful businessman of undetermined Mediterranean origin who you suspect of having mob ties. Literally translated, it means something like the “fishhook-toothed, fish-eating white mouth,” which sounds like something a woman of low class would be called in a Faulkner novel. I prefer the untranslated name, you know, for when you’re saying something like “No, don’t bother to call an ambulance. It was an Agkistrodon piscivorus leucostoma, so I’m basically already dead. Don’t touch my stuff.”

Yeah, snakes.

That Time Padma Lakshmi Sang

Though the clip has made the rounds on the blogs of the Top Chef crowd, I realized that I’d never posted it here. So, now, I’m doing my part to pass along a pop cultural gem to you all: Padma Lakshmi singing — in Mariah Carey’s Glitter, no less.

Now, I enjoy Padma Lakshmi, and I liken her presence in this film to a showy wildflower blooming in an abandoned lot. But I still find humor in her deathwarbling. It should be noted that Padma’s character is supposed to sound awful, so the atonal squawking you hear did not result from Padma’s misguided beliefs that she has musical chops. Also, the scene takes place in the 80s, which accounts to an extent why she’s dressed like a henchwoman for The Penguin, Adam West-era. Even better: Her character goes by the stage name Sylk — as in a fancy fabric that the wealthy would drape on themselves to demonstrate what their money can buy. Just. Too. Much.

While we’re on the subject: Hey, Wikipedia, is this really the best photo of Padma Lakshmi you could find? The one where her face is all shiny and her eyes look asymmetrical and she overall looks a little drunk? Because if so, then that’s awesome.

Oh, Padma. Indeed, you and only you can do the freaky things you do.

Leggings for Horses

“What’s that? They’ve crossed a donkey with a zebra? You don’t say! What a world!”

“And how might you refer to this hoof-creature? A zonkey? No, that’s no good. What if we took the first letter of donkey and the end of zebra… That would be… What? Oh. I’m sorry! No, I wasn’t implying anything. Oh, just come back to bed, Debra!”

EDIT: It has been pointed out to me that another name for this creature is zedonk or sometimes zeedonk. According to Wikipedia, the offspring of a male horse and a female zebra is a zebrinny, while one of a Mister Zebra and a Missus Horse is a zebrula. Now you know. And if you want to feel sad, read on about the Tijuana Zebra.

(Picture via SFGate, via The Doree Chronicles)

What It Takes to Make a Pro Blush

Lyrics from Kim Carnes’ 1981 song “Bette Davis Eyes,” arranged into appropriate categories:

Things that are meant to sound like a compliment and actually do:

• “Her hair is Harlowe gold”
• “Her lips a sweet surprise”
• “Her hands are never cold”
• “She’s got Bette Davis eyes”

Things that seem to be an insult:

• “She’s pure as New York snow”
• “And she’ll tease you, she’ll unease you”
• “She’ll expose you / When she snows you / Off your feet with the crumbs she throws you”

Things that initially sound like a compliment but then, after thinking about it, you realize that it might not necessarily be a nice thing to say:

• “She’s got Bette Davis eyes”
• “All the better just to please you”
• “She’ll let you take her home / It whets her appetite”
• “She’ll lay you on the throne” (Meaning “treat you royally” or “do you on the toilet”?)
• “She’ll take a tumble on you” (Meaning “fall for you”? “Take a dive for you”? Or “will literally fall on you because she also has Bette Davis’s hips”?)
• “She’s ferocious”

Things that seem neither here nor there:

• “She’ll turn the music on you”
• “You won’t have to think twice”
• “She’s precocious”
• “Roll you like you were dice / Until you come up blue”
• “All the boys think she’s a spy”

Things written because they rhymed and not because they sound like anything a native English-speaker would say out of the context of a pop song:

• “She’ll turn the music on you”
• “And she knows just what it takes to make a pro blush”
• “She’ll expose you / When she snows you / Off your feet with the crumbs she throws you”

Things that 80s youth might not have understood and which the passage of time has only made more obscure:

• “Her hair is Harlow gold” (Many of the 10,000 hits you get by Googling “Bette Davis eyes lyrics” incorrectly state this line as “hollow gold,” which puts an interesting spin on things.)
• “She’s got Bette Davis eyes” (Like the old crinkle lady from Watcher in the Woods?)
• “She got Greta Garbo’s stand-off sighs” (Sometimes confused with “thighs”)

Incidentally, Carnes’s recording wasn’t the first version of the song. Jackie DeShannon, probably best known for singing “Put a Little Love in Your Heart,” wrote “Bette Davis Eyes” and recorded it herself in 1974. Now, I can’t say that I like the Kim Carnes version all that much, but it is indisputably an iconic early 80s song. Consequently, DeShannon’s original take feels bizarre and wrong, despite coming first.

I imagine I’d have a similar reaction if I found out that, for example, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was actually a remake of some obscure Norwegian arthouse movie and tried to sit through that.

Your Thoughts Are Dirty / And Your Clothes Are Too

Three years after being given the song “Space For Rent” by WhoMadeWho on a mix CD, I’m still not tired of it.

Neither should you be. Because more sexy was never made from a falsetto voice and a song about a roommate listing.

Hooters Say: You’re Not Porking Enough!

At best, it’s a request for more pig-meat. At worst, it’s something far less innocent. In either case, it’s the word of the week.

morepork (pronounced… um… like it’s spelled) — noun: an owl of the genus Ninox inhabiting New Zealand and Australia.

I offered the pronunciation the way I did not to crack wise — or “be cheeky,” as the moreporks might say — but to note that the pronunciation of the word changes quite a bit depending on whether you’re a North American English-speaker or not. In general, I think you’re meant to pronounce the word as you would the words more and pork. However, because Britons, Aussies, Kiwis and others pronounce the letter “R” differently than I do, the American pronunciation of the word loses quite a bit.

(image credits: stuff.co.nz, tiritiri matangi island, churchmousenz)

As you can see, the morepork has the unfortunate quality of always looking totally freaked out.

Originally, morepork and other, less funny names for this owl such as mopoke and boobook began as onomatopoetic representations of its two-syllable hoot. (That is, the owls may not be what they seem, but they’re actively telling you what they are. The tendency to announce themselves may be characteristic of New Zealand birds, as the kiwi bird’s name is also onomatopoetic.) You can tell by the latter two names that you’re not meant to hear an “R” in morepork, but I’m actually not sure how an American should approach this one. With an affected British “R”? Or as he or she normally would, even though doing so would deprive the word of its reason for existing?

This simple matter could easily be extrapolated into a whole book about interplay and imitation between Americans and Britons. We’ll call it The Morepork in the Mouth of the American. And it will surely mention the Winnie the Pooh character Eeyore, who, as I’ve noted earlier, suffers a similar fate. His name is also onomatopoetic — specifically of the noise a donkey makes. But you wouldn’t know it to hear an American pronounce Eeyore’s name. Coming from someone in A.A. Milne’s homeland, however, Eeyore sounds a lot like the American way of referring to a donkey braying, hee-haw. Plus “R,” minus “H.” Transcontinental English mathematics.

According to the site Curious Words and Phrases, though the word morepork appears in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels in the name of the city Ankh-Morepork, Pratchett said the resemblance is coincidental, though the owl may have been retroactively incorporated into the insignia for the city. Curious Words and Phrases also notes that morepork was used in the The Harp in the South, a novel by New Zealand author Ruth Park:

Not black,” cried Hughie. “I won't have my wife looking like a morepork’s widow.” This pleased him, and he lay there chuckling for some minutes, repeating “morepork’s widow.”

But even being half-New Zealander, I don’t have a clue what morepork’s widow could mean. Ruth Park, I cannot fail to note, gained some fame later for the popular Muddle-Headed Wombat series of books. Oh, down under people — why must you be so down under?

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that the owl saddled with this name is also known to some by yet other names, including ruru, spotted owl, marbled owl and tawny frogmouth. That last one is erroneous because the tawny frogmouth is a separate species. And that’s mention enough for me to post a rather endearing photo of a frogmouth doing what it does best: making a goofy face.

For a bird that most cultures associate with wisdom, owls spend a lot of time looking all stupid.

Previous strange and wonderful words:

• adulterine, ageusia, ambeer, anosmia
• barrack, bissextile, bloofer, breastsummer
• catholicon, cecaelia, couvade, cranberry morpheme, crwth, cummingtonite
• deasil, decussate, deuteragonist, dingle
• eidolon, epeolatry, epopt, espalier, etui
• fabiform, fissilingual, Föhnkrankheit, folderol, froward
• gallinipper, grandgore, grue, gyaru
• hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia, honorificabilitudinitatibus
• itaiitai, ignivomous
• jabroni, jamais vu, jehu, jumentous
• kaffir, kakopygian, knipperdollin
• leman, lemniscate, limnovore, linsey-woolsey, longicorn
• malacia, milt, mongo
• nef, nihilartikel, nobiliary particle, nosism
• ooglification, orchidectomy, ordured, orf
• pace, pareidolia, pavonated, petrichor, pismire, pong, puggle, purse
• quacksalver, quagga, qualtagh, quidnunc
• ronion, roynish, rubirosa
• salmagundi, scrutator, seneschal, shebang, sinople, stevedore, suovetaurilia
• tergiversate, thagomizer, thon, tiffin, tittery-whoppet, tmesis, toby, tyro
• ucalegon, ultramontane
• veneficial, verdigris, vespertilionine, vinegeroon
• williwaw, witzelsucht, wooper looper
• xenodocheionology, xyster
• yazoo, ypsiliform, yoink
• zanjero, zenzizenzizenzic, zinnober, zugzwang

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Cosa Avete Fatto a Solange?

A question will only make sense to fans of exploitation cinema: Was I the only one who didn’t realize that the title character of the 1972 giallo film What Have You Done to Solange? was played by the same actress who just six years later played the victim in the gratuitously brutal I Spit on Your Grave?

Another, perhaps of slightly broader interest: Also, was I the only one who didn’t know that the actress, Camille Keaton, is the stepmother to Lorna Luft, who is the daughter of Judy Garland and the half-sister of Liza Minelli?

Thirdly, the most general of all: Doesn’t Camille Keaton’s association with Judy Gardland, the Minellis and the Lufts make her seem even crazier yet?

Finally, a question that is neither here nor there: Can you stop and imagine for a moment how different What Have You Done to Solange? and I Spit on Your Grave would have been if Liza Minelli had played the victim in either?

image sources: spit title card, solange title card