know your spoon handles

the next time your special spooning partner asks for a special spoon, you might consider offering one of the prelude, enchantress, 1810, or courtship variety.

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source: 1939 advertisement for the international silver co.

know your cow butts

it used to be that one could select a good dairy cow based upon the shape of the hairs on its thighs. nowadays: growth hormones.

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source: how to select cows by william pope hazard (1889).

know your c••cuses

i’d like to send a big cyber-five to my squash coach, allan who, while getting his hoopty tuned, was able to program me a computer program which—more or less—outputs reams and reams of words which have similar letters in similar places.

now alls i need to do is befriend somebody else who can program a computer program that will add the tube-style, technicolour lines and then i will be able to retire to the south of france and take up a hobby like metal detectoring beaches for tennis bracelets and rare bottlecaps.

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pre·viously, also: i still don’t have a good name for this series. if you do, i’d love to hear from you. i mean, i’d love to hear from you anyway, though naming this series is a convenient excuse for discourse.

know your t•r•ids

know your mo•g•ls

know your furors

quite by accident, i have encountered several latin furor phrases while reading books between laps at the natatorium. here are as many as i could find. if you know of any more, please consider twittering them at me. 

• furor academicus · the fury of academia
• furor biographicus · biographers’ fury; it causes biographers to overlook the faults of the people they write about
• furor criticus · critics’ fury; it causes critics to exaggerate the weaknesses of that which they criticize
• furor epilepticus  · an attack of intense anger occurring in epilepsy
• furor loquendi · a rage for speaking
• furor poeticus · an inspired frenzy in poets
• furor scribendi · a rage for writing
• furor teutonicus · the proverbial fierceness of the teutones, or more generally the germanic tribes
• furor uterinus · womb frenzy; an uncontrollable sexual desire in a woman, now called hypersexuality

who knew that there was this longstanding tradition of fury? maybe these writers, poets, academic types, epileptics, etcetry etcetry need to take a chill pill and listen to some jason mraz.

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bonus: how could we discus fury and not the æneid? let us not forget virgil’s furor arma ministrat (rage provides arms, ie. one uses any weapon when enraged).
an easter egg: this is a sekrit f-word post aggregated from various dictionaries, non-dictionaries, and conversations with a peete’s coffee barista.
previously: know your noms

know your knives -or- the art of dismembering

LA based auteurs of splattercore and other horror sub-genres should take note: there are levels of ancient artistry involved in separating limbs and rending flesh that have been ignored too long and should be resurrected. I am the proud owner not only of an antique abattoir knife bigger than my arm (that took some fast-talking to get through baggage security) but also a solid brass ferro da maccaroni—as seen above—that my cousin-in-law’s mother sent me from Lucania (more smuggling through airports*). It weighs in at a whopping 824 grammes and each of its 50 circular ridges is razor sharp. I keep it by the door in case some random b&e artist is deranged enough to climb seven flights of stairs and try to break in to Limey Towers. I mean, it makes gorgeous spaghetti alla chitarra, but as a cosh its potential for gory R-rated mayhem is unparalleled. Fortunately for me and for the burglars of Brooklyn, their being short-winded means so far I’ve only used this terrifying piece of metalwork as its manufacturer intended. But I throw this possible scenario out there for any screenwriters browsing past. Is it too much to ask for a little slasher flick finesse, if that’s what it takes to reboot an interest in the cutler’s art?

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image of very sharp italian things via
*Professional customs-official-reassurer and eyelash-flutterer: Do Not Attempt

the content and capital letters of this post have been brought to you by the ever plucky ramona ranchera.

how to tie your neckcloth in the latest georgian era fashion

you can find detailed instructions here (as well as the associated colours of each style)—but stay away from the osbaldiston, that particular way of wearing a neckcloth is mine and mine alone.

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from: the whole art of dress! by “a cavalry officer” (1830)
previously: this

know your top hat styles*

i rock a tilbury 24/7. just sayin’.

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*from: the whole art of dress! by “a cavalry officer” (1830).

know your noms

• nom de guerre · war name, a name assumed by a person engaged in an enterprise
• nom de plume · pen name, a name assumed by a writer
• nom de théâtre · stage name, a name assumed by an actor
• nom de vente · buyer name, name assumed by a buyer at an auction who wishes to remain anonymous

know your fuds -or- how i misinterpreted an email from my marketing pal

who woulda thought that when claude “footman’s mawnd” garamond died in an exotic pet store 1561 that his eponymous typeface would be revived three-hundred years subsequent by every major type haus in existence and would be used for everything from typesetting the american edition of harry potter books to representing apple in all branding and marketing materials in the 1984 launch of the macintosh?

some of these pesky foundries however, took certain “liberties” when reviving claude’s original letterforms. some even based their fonts not on garamond but on his hapless successor, jean jannon. it is therefore little shock that this highly popular font has a multitude of variations each with subtle nuances. using your aquiline font eyes, can you spot:

garmond 3, garamond classico, stempel garamond, garamond premier pro, adobe garamond, itc garamond, simoncini garamond, and sabon (a garamond not named garamond)?

answers here.

previous quizes: know your odyssey translation and know your dvořák.