“They sounded like weak things compared with my list; I kept my thoughts to myself.”

October 25, 2014 Chapter 12 …and then the sub said, “Here’s another,” and moved on to somebody else’s list, which consisted of actual occupations, things you might really become out there in the world once you got out of school. They sounded like weak things compared with my list; I kept my thoughts to myself. All Excerpts From Darnielle, John. “Wolf in White Van.” Farrar, Straus and Giroux. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

"like a surgeon putting an X on the wrong leg…"

October 25, 2014 Chapter 16 …like a surgeon putting an X on the wrong leg just before somebody fires up the saw. All Excerpts From Darnielle, John. “Wolf in White Van.” Farrar, Straus and Giroux. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

“But I cleaned and culled and thinned, and things lose meaning over time.”

October 25, 2014 Chapter 16 But I cleaned and culled and thinned, and things lose meaning over time. All Excerpts From Darnielle, John. “Wolf in White Van.” Farrar, Straus and Giroux. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

“I loved it; nobody I knew listened to stuff like this.”

October 25, 2014 Chapter 17 I loved it; nobody I knew listened to stuff like this. All Excerpts From Darnielle, John. “Wolf in White Van.” Farrar, Straus and Giroux. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

Never thought I'd read this phrase: "Urine collection on this scale"

October 8, 2014 Chapter 2: Inside America’s Deer-Industrial Complex Urine collection on this scale involves rows of indoor pens whose slotted floors are drained by highly specialized plumbing. Raising deer primarily for their hormone- and pheromone-laced urine, and only secondarily for meat, antlers, or release at high-fence hunting preserves, has quietly become a multimillion-dollar industry. All Excerpts From Cambronne, Al. “Deerland: America's Hunt for Ecological Balance and the Essence of Wildness.” Lyons Press, 2013-04-02. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Bucks use trees as social media

October 6, 2014 Chapter 1: Darwin’s Deer Every fall, bucks attack the trunks of small trees they’ve chosen as sparring partners. By thrashing their antlers against the tree and rubbing off large patches of bark, they strengthen their neck muscles in preparation for any actual combat that could ensue later. Besides actually rubbing the spot with their antlers, bucks slide their preorbital glands against the exposed wood, lick and chew the tattered shreds of bark, and then check back every now and then to see who else is doing the same. All Excerpts From Cambronne, Al. “Deerland: America's Hunt for Ecological Balance and the Essence of Wildness.” Lyons Press, 2013-04-02. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

"urinate on their ankles, rub them together, and mark their territory with every step"

October 6, 2014 Chapter 1: Darwin’s Deer They urinate on their ankles, rub them together, and mark their territory with every step they take. All Excerpts From Cambronne, Al. “Deerland: America's Hunt for Ecological Balance and the Essence of Wildness.” Lyons Press, 2013-04-02. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

"even pampered suburban deer rarely live to be more than three or four years old"

October 6, 2014 Chapter 1: Darwin’s Deer Hunters. Predators. Motor vehicles. Long, cold winters or long, hot summers. Diseases, parasites, and prions. Random mishaps. For all these reasons, and generally in about that order, even pampered suburban deer rarely live to be more than three or four years old. Once deer are deceased (or subdued and anesthetized), biologists can age them fairly precisely by examining the wear on their teeth. By the time deer are about ten years old, their teeth are worn to the gum line. If the resulting nutritional deficiencies don’t lead to outright starvation, they leave the animal more vulnerable to cold, heat, diseases, parasites, and predators. All Excerpts From Cambronne, Al. “Deerland: America's Hunt for Ecological Balance and the Essence of Wildness.” Lyons Press, 2013-04-02. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Cattle graze; deer browse:

October 5, 2014 Chapter 1: Darwin’s Deer Cattle graze; deer browse. If you look closely, you can see it in their faces. Cows have broad lawnmower noses, wide jaws, and a mouthful of teeth shaped for scissored, side-to-side grinding. Although moose and caribou share some of these same facial features, deer have long, slender noses and narrow jaws that end almost in a point. All Excerpts From Cambronne, Al. “Deerland: America's Hunt for Ecological Balance and the Essence of Wildness.” Lyons Press, 2013-04-02. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Excerpt from nicely narrated photo "slideshow":

September 28, 2014 Nineteen Moving away from the cab towards the kerb, now. Laughing. The cab driver's watching her bottom, which I would do if I was a cab driver. She'd watched the back of his neck, he was watching her bottom. A fair exchange. Well not quite fair, perhaps, but no one ever said it was a perfect world. All Excerpts From Laurie, Hugh. “The Gun Seller.” Soho Press, 2009-09-01. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

“I added enough water to turn it into just a Vaguely Familiar Grouse”

September 18, 2014 Two …the only other entertainment I could find in the flat was whisky, so I picked up a glass and a bottle of The Famous Grouse, poured myself a couple of fingers, and went into the kitchen. I added enough water to turn it into just a Vaguely Familiar Grouse… All Excerpts From Laurie, Hugh. “The Gun Seller.” Soho Press, 2009-09-01. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

What is it about the 19th century…

September 15, 2014 Introduction As the small family orchard became unprofitable, and Prohibition made cider apples taboo, people stopped propagating the old varieties. Of those thousands of nineteenth-century varieties, a mere six (Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Gala, Fuji, Granny Smith, McIntosh) came to dominate the late-twentieth-century market. All Excerpts From Jacobsen, Rowan. “Apples of Uncommon Character.” Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2014. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

"what was not consumed for drink was expected duly to turn into vinegar"

September 15, 2014 Introduction …Henry Ward Beecher, whose delightful essay on apple pie can be sampled in small servings throughout this book, described a typical mid-nineteenth-century cellar thus: “On the east side stood a row of cider barrels; for twelve or twenty barrels of cider were a fit provision for the year,—and what was not consumed for drink was expected duly to turn into vinegar, and was then exalted to certain hogsheads kept for the purpose. All Excerpts From Jacobsen, Rowan. “Apples of Uncommon Character.” Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2014. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Sailor speak: To be becalmed:

September 6, 2014 9. Animals Beneath This is the first quiet for four weeks and it is sweet, although sailors of old would dread such calm, creating a passive verb—to be becalmed—to express the malevolence they felt, as if they were assaulted by something beyond just weather and chance. All Excerpts From George, Rose. “Ninety Percent of Everything.” Henry Holt and Company. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Golden ages of piracy: 1716–22, 2005–10

September 5, 2014 6. High-Risk Area What is clear is that 2005–10 was another golden age of piracy, just as 1716–22 was the golden age for Blackbeard, Bartholomew Roberts, and colleagues. The Oxford English Corpus noted a fourfold use of the word pirate since 2007, with Somali the most common modifier. All Excerpts From George, Rose. “Ninety Percent of Everything.” Henry Holt and Company. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

sailboat : sail :: cargo ship : ____

September 3, 2014 5. Sea and Suez The time and place for such considerations is approaching even while we steam through this quiet green water, a majestic daisy chain of sedate ships. I don’t know if “steaming” is the right way to describe our movement. Steaming is inaccurate, unless the black bunker smoke counts as steam. Driving sounds wrong, despite the engines. Sailing is daft. It is a small point of vocabulary, but I have time to make it into a big one in these listless days and thousands of nautical miles, so that it ends up as a grand theory about how we haven’t bothered to update our language for these modern ships; the bigger they have become, the farther they have traveled from our vocabulary. Clearly there is an empty space in my brain that needs filling. All Excerpts From George, Rose. “Ninety Percent of Everything.” Henry Holt and Company. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Calling other nations "monkeys"? Seems tame for the sailor stereotype…

September 1, 2014 5. Sea and Suez …Channel 16 is a hailing channel and for emergencies. You make contact on Channel 16, then agree to switch to another channel. In practice, that doesn’t always work, particularly in calm waters and deep seas. Marius likes to listen to Channel 16 because all sorts of things happen on it. It’s the closest a seafarer gets to TV. Sometimes you hear Chinese being sung. Often you hear Indian voices yelling, “Filipino monkey!” The captain finds this unpleasantly racist, but Filipino voices often retaliate. “Indian, I can’t see you but I can smell you,” or, “Does anyone know what IMO stands for? Indian Monkey Organization.” All Excerpts From George, Rose. “Ninety Percent of Everything.” Henry Holt and Company. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Ship fuel: "so unrefined that you could walk on it at room temperature"

September 1, 2014 5. Sea and Suez Ships burn bunker fuel now, which takes its name from the coal bunkers it used to be stored in. … “Residual Fuel Oil, to give bunker its real name, is dirty but cheap. Even now that fuel is ruinously costly—$600 a ton—bunker is still the cheapest. But it is horrible stuff. It is so unrefined that you could walk on it at room temperature. Even the spokesperson for Intertanko, an association of independent tanker owners, calls it “crud,” and “one step up from asphalt.” Burning bunker fuel releases into the atmosphere gases and soot including carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, sulfur dioxide, black carbon, and particulate organic matter.” All Excerpts From George, Rose. “Ninety Percent of Everything.” Henry Holt and Company. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Flying the flag of convenience

September 1, 2014 4. Open Sea Port state control is supposed to be another regulatory brake on open registries. Various port authorities now issue a White List of flags judged to be responsible and a Black List of ones that are not. The Paris Memorandum of Understanding, an association of European port authorities, includes Liberia and Panama on its latest White List, as it has done for years. In the depths of the Black List, as you’d expect, swim North Korea, Libya, Sierra Leone, and Montenegro. The principle behind these lists is sound: port authorities have the power to detain unsafe ships in their ports. They home in on ships flagged to Black List countries, regularly detaining the rust buckets and unsafe ones, so that it becomes more trouble than it’s worth—and too expensive, with detention fees and lost income—to flag to poor or unstable states. All Excerpts From George, Rose. “Ninety Percent of Everything.” Henry Holt and Company. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

"Never visit a new state without stopping by a liquor store to see what's in stock." Yes.

August 31, 2014 [A Thumbnail Guide to Rum] My rule of thumb: Never visit a new state without stopping by a liquor store to see what's in stock. All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Villainizing column stills no longer valid? Would like more detail…

August 31, 2014 [A Thumbnail Guide to Rum] For the most part, though, improvements in distillation technology and barrel-aging techniques have evened out many of the differences between the two distilling methods, so which still is used today is typically of small consequence. For instance, Ron Zacapa from Guatemala—among the most heavily-bodied of rums—is made in a column still. However, a boutique pot-stilled rum has a distinct if subtle flavor profile prized by many rum connoisseurs. All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

"Sucking the monkey"

August 30, 2014 Chapter 9 - [Mai Tai] Early sailors enjoying shore leave would smuggle rum back aboard by drilling a hole in a coconut, draining the milk, then filling it with rum and sealing it back up. Surreptitiously sipping from the shell was called “sucking the monkey.” All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

"Moxie was the nation's top-selling beverage until the 1920s, when it was overtaken by…Coca-Cola"

August 29, 2014 Chapter 8 - [Rum and Coca-Cola] Moxie was the nation's top-selling beverage until the 1920s, when it was overtaken by a soft drink of even more exotic ingredients. Its inventor was a pharmaceutical chemist from Atlanta named John Pemberton. He concocted it with infusions of the coca plant from the Peruvian Andes and the high-caffeine kola nut from Africa, then tempered it with seven secret flavoring agents. Pemberton named the drink after its principal ingredients: Coca-Cola. All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

“A well-made daiquiri does not produce an ice-cream headache.”

August 29, 2014 Chapter 7 - [Daiquiri] A well-made daiquiri does not produce an ice-cream headache. All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

"The ungainly word mixologist was coined in 1856."

August 26, 2014 Chapter 6 - [Demon Rum] The ungainly word mixologist was coined in 1856. By 1870, W. F. Rae noted, “The most delicate fancy drinks are compounded by skillful mixologists in a style that captivates the public.” All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

“What key will unlock the door to hell? Whis-key.”

August 26, 2014 Chapter 6 - [Demon Rum] (To be fair, some tracts did go after whiskey, like the 1878 National Temperance Almanac, which asked, “What key will unlock the door to hell? Whis-key.”) All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Name's Bigger. Peacock Bigger:

August 23, 2014 Chapter 4 - [Medford Rum] (A merchant with the splendid name of Peacock Bigger built successful distilleries in both Philadelphia and Charlestown, Maryland.) All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Drowning cure?… “blowing tobacco smoke up the victim's rectum”

August 21, 2014 Chapter 3 - [Flip] Rum was always on hand for emergencies. Published instructions for reviving victims of drowning in Massachusetts called for blowing tobacco smoke up the victim's rectum (machines were built specifically for this purpose) while bathing the victim's breast with hot rum. If rum failed to restore you to life, it would be served to those who attended your funeral, even if you were poorly off, since the purchase of spirits for a final send-off had priority over paying off your creditors. All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Fire up the lembic, wife. I have thirst.

August 21, 2014 Chapter 3 - [Flip] And primitive backyard stills, called “lembics,” were not uncommon in the colonies; they were useful for making spirits out of fermented honey and pears and, in the southern colonies, from peaches. All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Five a day keeps something away…

August 20, 2014 Chapter 2 - [Grog] Even diluted, the grog ration was still equivalent to about five cocktails per day, assuming an ounce and a half of rum per cocktail. All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Let them eat cake. Let me drink punch!

August 19, 2014 Chapter 2 - [Grog] Vernon's 1740 order to distribute grog rather than “neat” rum included a provision that allowed crewmen to exchange their salt and bread allotment for “sugar and limes to make [grog] more palatable to them.” All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

“Before that, alcohol content was determined by mixing the spirit with a few grains of gunpowder and then subjecting the concoction to the focused rays of the sun under a magnifier.”

August 19, 2014 Chapter 2 - [Grog] The alcoholic content of early rum is unknown to us because it was unknown to those who consumed it. Not until 1816 was the Sikes hydrometer invented, which made it possible to measure the percentage of alcohol in liquor. Before that, alcohol content was determined by mixing the spirit with a few grains of gunpowder and then subjecting the concoction to the focused rays of the sun under a magnifier. If the gunpowder managed to ignite but the liquid didn't flare up, this was said to be “proof” of its proper alcoholic content. All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

The ignominious demise of Captain Morgan. Pirates shouldn't be allowed to grow old:

August 19, 2014 Chapter 2 - [Grog] But soon his health declined, and even visits to the rumshops became too taxing for him. He was confined to his estate, where he spent his days drinking with the few friends who hadn't abandoned him. Each morning began with a bout of vomiting. His legs were so swollen that he couldn't walk. He was unable to urinate and often weak from diarrhea. The naturalist Hans Sloane described him as “lean, sallowcolored, his eyes a little yellowish and Belly jutting out or prominent.” Captain Morgan's later life goes unmentioned in the marketing material for his namesake rum. All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Molasses enema?

August 17, 2014 Chapter 1 - [Kill-devil] …Thomas Cadwalader wrote an essay on the dry gripes and its treatments, and noted among the symptoms “excessive griping pains in the pit of the stomach and bowels, which are much distended with wind … at other times there is a sensation, as if the bowels were drawn together by ropes.” In some cases, “the patient begins to break wind backwards, which is some times exceeding offensive.” (It strains the imagination to think of times this would not be “exceeding offensive.”) Other associated problems included paralysis of the limbs and, in dire cases, death. The supposed remedy was scarcely better than the dry gripes itself: A molasses enema was often prescribed. All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

“but the first thing ye English do, is to set up a tavern or drinking house.”

August 17, 2014 Chapter 1 - [Kill-devil] Captain Thomas Walduck in 1708 neatly summarized the development of the West Indies: “Upon all the new settlements the Spaniards make, the first thing they do is build a church, the first thing ye Dutch do upon a new colony is to build them a fort, but the first thing ye English do, be it in the most remote part of ye world, or amongst the most barbarous Indians, is to set up a tavern or drinking house.” All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

“whiskey” via Gaelic “usquebaugh”? Interesting. I wonder what the OED says on this…

August 17, 2014 Chapter 1 - [Kill-devil] …“whiskey” is a corruption of usquebaugh, the Gaelic term for aqua vitae… All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Ooh, really wish this had a citation…

August 16, 2014 Chapter 1 - [Kill-devil] Distillation had been mentioned in passing by Aristotle and Pliny the Elder,… All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Rum as free market metaphor…Well put:

August 16, 2014 [Molasses] Bourbon fanciers, who often claim for their tipple the title of “America's spirit,” drink one of the most regulated spirits known. To be labeled bourbon, it has to be made with a certain percentage of corn and aged in a certain kind of barrel. But excessive regulation is not the spirit of America. Unrestricted experimentation is. Rum embodies America's laissez-faire attitude: It is whatever it wants to be. There have never been strict guidelines for making it. There's no international oversight board, and its taste and production varies widely, leaving the market to sort out favorites. If sugarcane or its by-products are involved in the distillation process, you can call it rum. All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Nice onomatopoeia: “grutch, gruntch, grutch, gruntch”

August 14, 2014 Part Five: The Mouse The wheels of a wagon ground and groaned in the icy street, and then came the hard ringing rattle of milk-bottles clinking together in their steel basket and the sound of the milkman going up the walk—grutch, gruntch, grutch, gruntch along the solid snow. All Excerpts From The Lost Weekend Charles Jackson & Blake Bailey Category: Fiction & Literature 5 Ratings

Endurance: “they stand all afternoon in a 2nd Avenue bar”

August 13, 2014 Part Five: The Mouse Brains indeed and indeed what good does it do them? Dreamy tosspots, they stand all afternoon in a 2nd Avenue bar looking at the sun-patterns under the L or their own faces in the[…] All Excerpts From The Lost Weekend Charles Jackson & Blake Bailey Category: Fiction & Literature 5 Ratings

I love when the narrator jumps contexts for humor:

August 10, 2014 Part Three: The Joke Working against time and exhaustion—beating breakdown, as it were, to the punch—he had fled down 1st Avenue in headlong blind staggering flight (not as fast as he believed it to be, but fast) and so got home.… All Excerpts From The Lost Weekend Charles Jackson & Blake Bailey Category: Fiction & Literature 5 Ratings

Out of the trunk, the branches grow

August 10, 2014 CHAPTER 63 The Crotch Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in productive subjects, grow the chapters. All Excerpts From Moby-Dick Herman Melville & Mary Bercaw Edwards Category: Classics 37 Ratings

Trucks with coughing klaxons speeded up, here, to make the grade to the bridge…

August 10, 2014 Part Three: The Joke He started out, and at once ran into the inferno that was 59th. Trucks with coughing klaxons speeded up, here, to make the grade to the bridge, the vast resounding grinding structure of the Queensboro bridge. The traffic was incoherent bedlam. Trolleys danged and clanged up the slope. Overhead the L exploded periodically with the supernatural rush and roar of a rocket-train out of the comics. His eyes fixed on his goal, he passed through it all like a sleepwalker in a nightmare, shaken by every insane noise but with one increasing purpose in his reeling mind: to reach the end of the dream and wake up. He staggered up the slight rise of ground to 60th Street and into a sidewalk world again of vegetable and fruit markets like pushcarts; bakeries, florists, funeral parlors, stores for rent, tinsmiths and paint shops and thrift shops. The smells. The sights. The dyed-hair and wigs; the poor; the nigger-pink-and-green playsuits; the hatless bald men carrying groceries home; the blind musicians; the broad broad women, the million bandanaed women, the million pregnant women. The noise. And in the intervals between trains passing overhead, the sound of the[…] All Excerpts From The Lost Weekend Charles Jackson & Blake Bailey Category: Fiction & Literature 5 Ratings

Trouble…

August 9, 2014 Part Two: The Wife …The bartender slid the bottle across the counter and this time he poured the drink himself. All Excerpts From The Lost Weekend Charles Jackson & Blake Bailey Category: Fiction & Literature 5 Ratings

picked up the ’phone and dialed ME-7-1212

August 9, 2014 Part Two: The Wife He went into the bedroom and sat down at the desk and picked up the ’phone and dialed ME-7-1212. He listened breathless to the breathless voice, with the oddly questioning lift at the end: “When yew hear the sig-nal, the tie-yum will be seven-fifty-fie-yuv and thrrree-quar-ters.” He did not wait for the signal, he said “Thank you” automatically and hung up. All Excerpts From The Lost Weekend Charles Jackson & Blake Bailey Category: Fiction & Literature 5 Ratings

with the fascinating picture of a woman and child holding a Post Toastie box with a picture of a woman and child holding a Post Toastie box with a picture of a woman and child holding—

August 9, 2014 Part Two: The Wife …so narcissistic that its final effect would be that of the mirrored room which gives back the same image times without count, or the old Post Toastie box of his boyhood with the fascinating picture of a woman and child holding a Post Toastie box with a picture of a woman and child holding a Post Toastie box with a picture of a woman and child holding—… All Excerpts From The Lost Weekend Charles Jackson & Blake Bailey Category: Fiction & Literature 5 Ratings

“while he sipped gin-vermouth which, for all they knew, might have been a Dubonnet or a sherry”

August 8, 2014 Part One: The Start …he had plenty of chance to play the solitary observant gentleman-drinker having a quiet time amusing himself watching other folk carouse, the while he sipped gin-vermouth which, for all they knew, might have been a Dubonnet or a sherry. All Excerpts From The Lost Weekend Charles Jackson & Blake Bailey Category: Fiction & Literature 5 Ratings

Standing at a bar? Was that more common in the 20th C?

August 8, 2014 Part One: The Start …shifted from one foot to the other: glanced at a couple of strangers standing farther down the bar… All Excerpts From The Lost Weekend Charles Jackson & Blake Bailey Category: Fiction & Literature 5 Ratings

Coffee bean penis implants!?

August 7, 2014 3. Harbor In a paper entitled “The Filipino Seafarer: A Life between Sacrifice and Shopping,” the Norwegian academic Gunnar Lamvik revealed the alarming practice among Filipino seafarers of slicing open their penis with a razor and implanting ball bearings or coffee beans. The implants are called bolitas, and the logic behind them is flexible. They keep wives from straying by enhancing their sexual pleasure, and they are useful to attract Brazilian prostitutes. This “secret weapon of the Filipinos,” wrote Lamvik, has something to do with the fact that “the Filipinos are so small, and the Brazilian women are so big.” Lamvik is told that nearly every Filipino seaman is equipped with bolitas. All Excerpts From George, Rose. “Ninety Percent of Everything.” Henry Holt and Company. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

This book reads like the blog of an earnest, but artless, teen writer…

August 7, 2014 3. Harbor It’s sad that crews bond over a pigeon or a monkey. But what else do they have to bond over? All Excerpts From George, Rose. “Ninety Percent of Everything.” Henry Holt and Company. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Hello, sailor:

August 6, 2014 3. Harbor The first-ever advice columnist, an eighteenth-century bookseller named John Dunton, recommended that a woman fearing lonely spinsterhood get down to the docks and find a sex-starved sailor. All Excerpts From George, Rose. “Ninety Percent of Everything.” Henry Holt and Company. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Alchemy: squid into ambergris:

August 6, 2014 XIV - The Ends of the Earth The exact origins of ambergris remain obscure; but it is certainly the result of a remarkable process. The sperm whale swallows squid alive, taking its food into the first of four stomachs. It then passes into a second stomach to be broken down by strong acids, assisted by a writhing mass of nematode worms, ‘a disgusting sight’ according to Malcolm, who has seen it many times. When the waste moves through the lower intestine the brittle, shiny black squid beaks–along with other indigestible material such as nematode cuticles–prompt the whale’s digestive system to secrete bile and thereby ease their passage. Occasionally–in as few as one in a hundred whales–this chemical reaction produces ambergris. All Excerpts From Hoare, Philip. “The Whale.” HarperCollins. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Thank you lord for this holy harpoon grenade.

Which explodeth on the count of three… August 3, 2014 XI - The Melancholy Whale On Christmas Eve 1868, Sven Foyn wrote in his diary: ‘I thank Thee, O Lord. Thou alone hast done all.’ The Norwegian was giving praise for the grenade harpoon he had just patented; a bomb that would explode in a whale’s head. All Excerpts From Hoare, Philip. “The Whale.” HarperCollins. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

"yron"—interesting dpelling of "iron"

August 3, 2014 XI - The Melancholy Whale …‘after a long Conflict, it was killed with the harping yrons, & struck in the head, out of which spouted blood & water, by two tunnells like Smoake from a chimney; & after an horrid grone it ran quite on shore & died.’ All Excerpts From Hoare, Philip. “The Whale.” HarperCollins. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Huggins to Turner to Melville's "boggy, soggy, squitchy" painting

August 2, 2014 IX - The Correct Use of Whales The influence of Turner’s sublime vistas, numinous with storms and shadows, emerges in Moby-Dick from the first. When Ishmael arrives at the Spouter Inn, he sees ‘a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something…floating in a nameless yeast’. Through the gloom, he makes out a whale launching itself over a storm-tossed ship, seemingly about to impale itself on its masts. ‘A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted,’ Ishmael allowed, with ‘a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant’. It was a dream version of Huggins’s graphic scenes; a fantastical Turner, seen through Ishmael’s ostensibly amateur eyes. All Excerpts From Hoare, Philip. “The Whale.” HarperCollins. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

The love lives of right whales:

August 2, 2014 VIII - Very Like a Whale Weighing nearly a ton, the male’s testes are the largest of any animal. These, along with its eight-foot penis, allow it to take part in sperm competition in which males assert their supremacy by multiple matings rather than fighting for favours (although they may use their callosities as a kind of weapon). Females will even permit more than one partner to enter them at the same time, after sessions of delicate foreplay in which the courting animals use their flippers to stroke each other with inordinate gentleness… All Excerpts From Hoare, Philip. “The Whale.” HarperCollins. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Typee made Melville a sex symbol? What did that even mean back then?

July 29, 2014 VII - The Divine Magnet It turned Melville into America’s first literary sex symbol–an almost disreputable figure. All Excerpts From Hoare, Philip. “The Whale.” HarperCollins. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

He's at home:

July 25, 2014 V - Far Away Land Whaling separated sexes; and in this isolated place, as isolated as any ship, and yet bleaker in midwinter, whaling ‘widows’ had recourse to opium to cope with the loneliness. Others used plaster dildos known as ‘he’s-at-homes’. All Excerpts From Hoare, Philip. “The Whale.” HarperCollins. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

I prefer ‘winter-strained’ sperm, thanks…

July 25, 2014 V - Far Away Land Headmatter from sperm whales was brought directly from the ships to large wooden manufactories, where it was heated in great kettles to remove water and impurities. It was stored in casks and, over winter, cooled to a coagulate mass. This was placed in woollen bags, which were then compacted in a wooden press from which spermaceti trickled, like juice from an apple press, or oil from olives. This first pressing, the purest, was known as ‘winter-strained’ sperm. All Excerpts From Hoare, Philip. “The Whale.” HarperCollins. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

"it makes more financial sense for Scottish cod to be sent ten thousand miles to China to be filleted, then sent back to Scottish shops"

July 24, 2014 1. Embarkation Shipping is so cheap that it makes more financial sense for Scottish cod to be sent ten thousand miles to China to be filleted, then sent back to Scottish shops and restaurants, than to pay Scottish filleters. A Scottish newspaper called this practice “madness,” but actually it’s just shipping. All Excerpts From George, Rose. “Ninety Percent of Everything.” Henry Holt and Company. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Sperm whales have a sonic boom attack!?

July 23, 2014 III - The Sperm Whale A sperm whale can create a two-hundred-decibel boom able to travel one hundred miles along the ‘sofar’ channel, a layer of deep water that readily conducts noise. It seems strange that such a physically enormous creature should rely on something so intangible; but bull sperm whales, by virtue of their larger heads, generate sounds so powerful that they may stun or even kill their prey. These directional acoustic bursts, focused through their foreheads and likened to gunshots, are the equivalent, as one writer notes, of the whale killing its quarry by shouting very loudly at it. All Excerpts From Hoare, Philip. “The Whale.” HarperCollins. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Cetacean appetite:

July 23, 2014 III - The Sperm Whale They eat mostly cephalopods, but also take tuna and barracuda; entire thirty-foot sharks have been found in their bellies. And they consume in enormous proportions, taking from three to seven hundred squid a day: worldwide, sperm whales eat one hundred million metric tons of fish a year–as much as the annual catch of the entire human marine fishery. All Excerpts From Hoare, Philip. “The Whale.” HarperCollins. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

So, the breadth of anxiety over violence evidences violence's dramatic decline

July 19, 2014 7. THE RECASTING OF HUMAN NATURE Contrary to widespread belief that the 20th century was more violent than any other, Pinker establishes that both personal violence and deaths in warfare have been in steady decline for as long as records can tell. All Excerpts From Wade, Nicholas. “A Troublesome Inheritance.” Penguin Group, USA, 2014-05-06. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Man domesticstes dog. Man domesticates man

July 19, 2014 7. THE RECASTING OF HUMAN NATURE This lightening of the bone, a genetically based process, is seen in the fossil remains of species like pigs and cattle as they were domesticated from their wild forebears. In people this process, called gracilization, proceeded independently in each of the world’s populations, according to the physical anthropologist Marta Mirazón Lahr. All Excerpts From Wade, Nicholas. “A Troublesome Inheritance.” Penguin Group, USA, 2014-05-06. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Take that, Mr. Diamond!

July 17, 2014 5. THE GENETICS OF RACE The single criterion that Diamond proposes as an alternative, genes that confer resistance to malaria, makes no evolutionary sense. Malaria became a significant human disease only very recently, some 6,000 years ago, and each race then independently developed resistance to it. Italians and Greeks resist malaria because of mutations that also cause the blood disease known as thalassemia, whereas Africans resist malaria through a different mutation that causes sickle-cell anemia. The trait of resisting malaria is one that has been acquired secondarily to race, so obviously it is not an appropriate way of classifying the populations. A scholar’s duty is to clarify, but Diamond’s argument seems designed to distract and confuse. All Excerpts From Wade, Nicholas. “A Troublesome Inheritance.” Penguin Group, USA, 2014-05-06. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Fossils make evolution seem slower than it actually is:

July 17, 2014 5. THE GENETICS OF RACE Biologists have long had to depend on the evidence from fossils to judge the speed of evolution. But fossils capture just the bones of an animal. And since the skeletal structure of a species changes only slowly, evolution has long seemed a glacially slow and plodding process. All Excerpts From Wade, Nicholas. “A Troublesome Inheritance.” Penguin Group, USA, 2014-05-06. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Euphemisms: Sheltering us from the cultural police

July 16, 2014 4. THE HUMAN EXPERIMENT As for the actual DNA elements now used by biologists to assign people to their race, or races if of mixed parentage, these are known discreetly as AIMs, or ancestry informative markers. All Excerpts From Wade, Nicholas. “A Troublesome Inheritance.” Penguin Group, USA, 2014-05-06. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

…only to have evolutionary biologists express disappointment at her efforts…

July 15, 2014 4. THE HUMAN EXPERIMENT A few biologists have begun to agree that there are human races, but they hasten to add that the fact means very little. Races exist, but the implications are “not much,” says the evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne.6 Too bad—nature has performed this grand 50,000 year experiment, generating scores of fascinating variations on the human theme, only to have evolutionary biologists express disappointment at her efforts. All Excerpts From Wade, Nicholas. “A Troublesome Inheritance.” Penguin Group, USA, 2014-05-06. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Chimp warfare? At what level do they comprehend their actions?

July 13, 2014 3. ORIGINS OF HUMAN SOCIAL NATURE Male chimps are unremittingly hostile to strange males and if possible will kill them on sight. Their favorite tactic on invading enemy territory is to surprise and kill any male whom they find alone. If the raiding party senses that it is outnumbered, it will retreat. A neighboring territory will be captured after its resident males have been killed off one by one in a campaign that may last several years. All Excerpts From Wade, Nicholas. “A Troublesome Inheritance.” Penguin Group, USA, 2014-05-06. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

"Imbecile" as technical term, fit for legal writing:

July 13, 2014 2. PERVERSIONS OF SCIENCE In the 1927 case, known as Buck v. Bell, the Supreme Court found for the state, with only one dissent. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing for the majority, endorsed without reservation the eugenicists’ credo that the offspring of the mentally impaired were a menace to society. “It is better for the world,” he wrote, “if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” All Excerpts From Wade, Nicholas. “A Troublesome Inheritance.” Penguin Group, USA, 2014-05-06. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Darwin on the poorly-named "Social Darwinism"

Compulsion to help the helpless as central property of human species. July 13, 2014 2. PERVERSIONS OF SCIENCE Yes, vaccination has saved millions whose weaker constitutions would otherwise have let them succumb to smallpox, Darwin wrote. And yes, the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind, which, to judge from animal breeding, “must be highly injurious to the race of man.” But the aid we feel impelled to give to the helpless is part of our social instincts, Darwin said. “Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature,” he wrote. “If we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.” All Excerpts From Wade, Nicholas. “A Troublesome Inheritance.” Penguin Group, USA, 2014-05-06. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

I appreciate authors who define their central vocabulary explicitly

July 13, 2014 2. PERVERSIONS OF SCIENCE The central premise of racism, which distinguishes it from ethnic prejudice, is the notion of an ordered hierarchy of races in which some are superior to others. The superior race is assumed to enjoy the right to rule others because of its inherent qualities. Besides superiority, racism also connotes the idea of immutability, thought once to reside in the blood and now in the genes. Racists are concerned about intermarriage (“the purity of the blood”) lest it erode the basis of their race’s superiority. Since quality is seen as biologically inherent, the racist’s higher status can never be challenged, and inferior races can never redeem themselves. All Excerpts From Wade, Nicholas. “A Troublesome Inheritance.” Penguin Group, USA, 2014-05-06. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

acronym vs initialism

July 11, 2014 …For those of you who care about such things, there is a difference between an acronym and an initialism. The former refers to an abbreviation consisting of letters that are pronounced as a single word (such as NASA), and the latter refers to an abbreviation consisting of letters that are pronounced separately (such as CIA). All Excerpts From Shea, Ammon. “Bad English.” Penguin Group, USA, 2014-06-03. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

game of bumdockdousse, anyone?

July 10, 2014 Five: The Continuing Deterioration of the Language …bumdockdousse (a game, now infrequently played, which appears to entail little more than three people standing about and kicking each other in the buttocks). All Excerpts From Shea, Ammon. “Bad English.” Penguin Group, USA, 2014-06-03. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

In other words, Dan Quayle died for your sins.

July 10, 2014 Five: The Continuing Deterioration of the Language I am concerned with the question of why we all know that potato has no e at the end of it. The answer to this question is that many of us now have a firm grasp of this thanks to our beleaguered former vice president. In other words, Dan Quayle died for your sins. All Excerpts From Shea, Ammon. “Bad English.” Penguin Group, USA, 2014-06-03. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Could you repeat that as a Homeric epithet?

July 8, 2014 Four: Sins of Grammar Nuria Yáñez-Bouza is a professor of linguistics, specializing in the history of English presciptivism, with a subspecialty in attitudes toward sentences that end with a preposition (or, as the linguists would phrase it, preposition stranding). All Excerpts From Shea, Ammon. “Bad English.” Penguin Group, USA, 2014-06-03. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

If you must gripe, gripe well:

July 6, 2014 Three: Verbing Nouns That man, Frederick W. Lienau, wrote a letter to the managers of the company, making clear his displeasure with the use of the word: “Somewhere there cumbers this fair earth with his loathsome presence a man who, for the common good, should have been destroyed in early childhood. He is the originator of the hideous vulgarism of using ‘contact’ as a verb. So long as we can meet, get in touch with, make the acquaintance of, be introduced to, call on, interview or talk to people, there can be no apology for ‘contact.’” All Excerpts From Shea, Ammon. “Bad English.” Penguin Group, USA, 2014-06-03. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

“The Americans are coming, and they’re verbing nouns in a transitive manner as they go!”

July 6, 2014 Three: Verbing Nouns …“The Americans are coming, and they’re verbing nouns in a transitive manner as they go!”… All Excerpts From Shea, Ammon. “Bad English.” Penguin Group, USA, 2014-06-03. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Thou shalt not doubt my plausibility

I love that even in scenes of action & suspense, he doesn't flinch from justifying his artistic liberties in fact. It gives the narrative an oral feel. June 26, 2014 CHAPTER 135 The Chase • Third Day It is a thing not uncommonly happening to the whale-boats in those swarming seas; the sharks at times apparently following them in the same prescient way that vultures hover over the banners of marching regiments in the east. All Excerpts From Melville, Herman. “Moby-Dick.” Harlequin, 2009. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

why you so stupider?

July 5, 2014 Two: Words That Are Not Words We do not say that someone is honester than someone else, and so it follows that we would likewise not say “so-and-so is the honestest person I know.”* Yet we would have little trouble saying “When you use the word stupider, it makes you sound like the stupidest person in the room.” All Excerpts From Shea, Ammon. “Bad English.” Penguin Group, USA, 2014-06-03. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

"no one complains much about irk"

June 30, 2014 One: Arguing Semantics If all this befuddles you, and you would like to say that something aggravates you without running the risk of having your audience confused as to whether you intended it to mean “makes you worse,” “inflames your disease,” “accuses you,” “weighs you down,” “increases your offensiveness,” or any one of the other possibilities that the word offers, then I suggest you just go with irk—no one complains much about irk. All Excerpts From Shea, Ammon. “Bad English.” Penguin Group, USA, 2014-06-03. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

"belittle": The "harshing on" of the 1780s?

July 1, 2014 Two: Words That Are Not Words Belittle may look like a fine old English word, but it has the whiff of cheap backwoods neologism to it. It was coined in the early 1780s by Thomas Jefferson, shortly after the American Revolution; a time when there was a marked tendency on the part of some residents of the United Kingdom to cast aspersions at our country. All Excerpts From Shea, Ammon. “Bad English.” Penguin Group, USA, 2014-06-03. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Triple Em Dash!

June 17, 2014 CHAPTER 127 Ahab and the Carpenter “Faith, sir, I’ve———” All Excerpts From Melville, Herman. “Moby-Dick.” Harlequin, 2009. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

"Snap!"—A rare onomatopoeia in Moby-Dick

June 17, 2014 CHAPTER 125 The Log and Line Snap! the overstrained line sagged down in one long festoon; the tugging log was gone. All Excerpts From Melville, Herman. “Moby-Dick.” Harlequin, 2009. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

Who are you who are so wise in the ways of science?

I love that Ahab executes a child's science trick and it causes a bunch of tough sailors to slink away. June 17, 2014 CHAPTER 124 The Needle …“Look ye, for yourselves, if Ahab be not lord of the level loadstone! The sun is East, and that compass swears it!” One after another they peered in, for nothing but their own eyes could persuade such ignorance as theirs, and one after another they slunk away. In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his fatal pride. All Excerpts From Melville, Herman. “Moby-Dick.” Harlequin, 2009. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

double em dash!

June 16, 2014 CHAPTER 123 The Musket I stand alone here upon an open sea, with two oceans and a whole continent between me and law.—Aye, aye, ’tis so.—Is heaven a murderer when its lightning strikes a would-be murderer in his bed, tindering sheets and skin together?—And would I be a murderer, then, if”——and slowly, stealthily, and half sideways looking, he placed the loaded musket’s end against the door. All Excerpts From Melville, Herman. “Moby-Dick.” Harlequin, 2009. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

This is no time for poetry!

June 15, 2014 Oh, thou foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast thy incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief. Here again with haughty agony, I read my sire. Leap! leap up, and lick the sky! I leap with thee; I burn with thee; would fain be welded with thee; defyingly I worship thee!” “The boat! the boat!” cried Starbuck, “look at thy boat, old man!” All Excerpts From Melville, Herman. “Moby-Dick.” Harlequin, 2009. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

Thou art too damned jolly. Sail on.

June 14, 2014 CHAPTER 115 The Pequod meets the Bachelor “Come aboard, come aboard!” cried the gay Bachelor’s commander, lifting a glass and a bottle in the air. “Hast seen the White Whale?” gritted Ahab in reply. “No; only heard of him; but don’t believe in him at all,” said the other good-humoredly. “Come aboard!” “Thou art too damned jolly. Sail on. Hast lost any men?” All Excerpts From Melville, Herman. “Moby-Dick.” Harlequin, 2009. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

so much sperm

June 14, 2014 CHAPTER 115 The Pequod meets the Bachelor …indeed everything was filled with sperm, except the captain’s pantaloons pockets, and those he reserved to thrust his hands into, in self-complacent testimony of his entire satisfaction. All Excerpts From Melville, Herman. “Moby-Dick.” Harlequin, 2009. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

The species altered itself in a matter of decades?

June 10, 2014 CHAPTER 105 Does the Whale Diminish? Because, as has been elsewhere noticed, those whales, influenced by some views to safety, now swim the seas in immense caravans, so that to a large degree the scattered solitaries, yokes, and pods, and schools of other days are now aggregated into vast but widely separated, unfrequent armies. All Excerpts From Melville, Herman. “Moby-Dick.” Harlequin, 2009. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

to accomplish something without a precise objective, and reluctantly

June 8, 2014 DOR ( ROMANIAN ) The notion of dor is widespread in popular poetry and arises in many idiomatic expressions, such as dor de ducà ( the desire to leave without a particular destination—to go wandering ) and în dorul lelii ( to accomplish something without a precise objective, and reluctantly ). All Excerpts From Cassin, Barbara. “Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon.” Princeton University Press, 2014. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

The asymptote! Such a metaphor…

June 8, 2014 DOR ( ROMANIAN ) …dor suggests the impossibility of attaining that object in this life. The tension is positive, but the desire remains unsatisfied and fulfillment impossible. The geometrical figure that best illustrates this tension is the asymptote. All Excerpts From Cassin, Barbara. “Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon.” Princeton University Press, 2014. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

"A Bower in the Arsacides" puts me to sleep every time…

June 8, 2014 CHAPTER 102 A Bower in the Arsacides Hitherto, in descriptively treating of the Sperm Whale, I have chiefly dwelt upon the marvels of his outer aspect; or separately and in detail upon some few interior structural features. All Excerpts From Melville, Herman. “Moby-Dick.” Harlequin, 2009. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

"to whisper" transitive, obj=listener

June 6, 2014 CHAPTER 100 The Pequod meets the Samuel Enderby of London “Good God!” cried the English Captain, to whom the question was put. “What’s the matter? He was heading east, I think.—Is your Captain crazy?” whispering Fedallah. All Excerpts From Melville, Herman. “Moby-Dick.” Harlequin, 2009. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

Brothers don't shake hands, brothers gotta hug!

June 5, 2014 CHAPTER 100 The Pequod meets the Samuel Enderby of London “Hast seen the White Whale?” “See you this?” and withdrawing it from the folds that had hidden it, he held up a white arm of sperm whale bone, terminating in a wooden head like a mallet. “Man my boat!” cried Ahab, impetuously, and tossing about the oars near him—”Stand by to lower!” All Excerpts From Melville, Herman. “Moby-Dick.” Harlequin, 2009. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

"bye-play"—curious spelling

June 6, 2014 CHAPTER 100 The Pequod meets the Samuel Enderby of London “What became of the White Whale?” now cried Ahab, who thus far had been impatiently listening to this bye-play between the two Englishmen. All Excerpts From Melville, Herman. “Moby-Dick.” Harlequin, 2009. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

Another use of "man" in “For Whom the Bell Tolls”

June 5, 2014 Chapter 3 “You have not God any more?” “No. Man. Certainly not. If there were God, never would He have permitted what I have seen with my eyes. Let them have God.” All Excerpts From Hemingway, Ernest. “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” Scribner. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

"Yes, man." — intended to sound stilted?

June 5, 2014 Chapter 3 “You like to hunt?” “Yes, man. More than anything. We all hunt in my village. You do not like to hunt?” All Excerpts From Hemingway, Ernest. “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” Scribner. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

"ye" = "y'all"?

June 5, 2014 CHAPTER 99 The Doubloon “I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look.” “Upon my soul, he’s been studying Murray’s Grammar! All Excerpts From Melville, Herman. “Moby-Dick.” Harlequin, 2009. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

Why can't we do the ball thing all the time?

June 4, 2014 CHAPTER 98 Stowing Down & Clearing Up Oh! my friends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life. For hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from this world’s vast bulk its small but valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done, when—There she blows!—the ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other world, and go through young life’s old routine again. All Excerpts From Melville, Herman. “Moby-Dick.” Harlequin, 2009. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

What is an "icy"?

June 3, 2014 CHAPTER 98 Stowing Down & Clearing Up This is the reason why the decks never look so white as just after what they call an affair of oil. Besides, from the ashes of the burned scraps of the whale, a potent icy is readily made; and whenever any adhesiveness from the back of the whale remains clinging to the side, that icy quickly exterminates it. Hands go diligently along the bulwarks, and with buckets of water and rags restore them to their full tidiness. All Excerpts From Melville, Herman. “Moby-Dick.” Harlequin, 2009. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

Ale was commonly presented in punch bowls?

June 3, 2014 CHAPTER 97 The Lamp See with what entire freedom the whaleman takes his handful of lamps—often but old bottles and vials, though—to the copper cooler at the try-works, and replenishes them there, as mugs of ale at a vat. All Excerpts From Melville, Herman. “Moby-Dick.” Harlequin, 2009. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

97 chapters before we glimpse the forecastle! (unless I missed something)

June 3, 2014 CHAPTER 97 The Lamp Had you descended from the Pequod’s try-works to the Pequod’s forecastle, where the off duty watch were sleeping… All Excerpts From Melville, Herman. “Moby-Dick.” Harlequin, 2009. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

What does it mean, to squeeze case?

A strange way to put it… June 2, 2014 CHAPTER 94 A Squeeze of the Hand Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now, since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side, the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally. All Excerpts From Melville, Herman. “Moby-Dick.” Harlequin, 2009. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

The intense concentration of self in the middle of such a heartless immensity

June 1, 2014

CHAPTER 93 The Castaway

Now, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the practised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore. But the awful lonesomeness is intolerable. The intense concentration of self in the middle of such a heartless immensity, my God! who can tell it? Mark, how when sailors in a dead calm bathe in the open sea—mark how closely they hug their ship and only coast along her sides.

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my fingers felt like eels

May 31, 2014 CHAPTER 94 A Squeeze of the Hand No wonder that in old times this sperm was such a favorite cosmetic. Such a clearer! such a sweetener! such a softener! such a delicious mollifier! After having my hands in it for only a few minutes, my fingers felt like eels, and began, as it were, to serpentine and spiralize. All Excerpts From Melville, Herman. “Moby-Dick.” Harlequin, 2009. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Available in iBooks Store

Stubb then in a plain, businesslike, but still half humorous manner, cursed Pip officially

I love the idea of a cooly delivered, official cursing,

May 29, 2014

CHAPTER 93 The Castaway

Tranquilly permitting these irregular cursings to evaporate, Stubb then in a plain, businesslike, but still half humorous manner, cursed Pip officially; and that done, unofficially gave him much wholesome advice.

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It's a wax nose!

May 28, 2014

CHAPTER 91 The Pequod meets the Rose Bud

"What's the matter with your nose, there?" said Stubb. "Broke it?"
"I wish it was broken, or that I didn't have any nose at all!" answered the Guernsey-man, who did not seem to relish the job he was at very much. "But what are you holding yours for?"
"Oh, nothing! It's a wax nose; I have to hold it on. Fine day, aint it? Air rather gardenny, I should say; throw us a bunch of posies, will ye, Bouton-de-Rose?"

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Comma Em dash—You will know I've paused!

May 27, 2014

CHAPTER 89 Fast Fish and Loose Fish

For example,—after a weary and perilous chase and capture of a whale…

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"years and dumps" – what are "dumps"?

To be rejected by a lover?

May 26, 2014

CHAPTER 88 Schools & Schoolmasters

In good time, nevertheless, as the ardor of youth declines; as years and dumps increase; as reflection lends her solemn pauses; in short, as a general lassitude overtakes the sated Turk; then a love of ease and virtue supplants the love for maidens…

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butt nipples

May 26, 2014

…a contingency provided for in suckling by two teats, curiously situated, one on each side of the anus; but the breasts themselves extend upwards from that. When by chance these precious parts in a nursing whale are cut by the hunter's lance, the mother's pouring milk and blood rivallingly discolor the sea for rods. The milk is very sweet and rich; it has been tasted by man; it might do well with strawberries.

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"zones" = boobs

Thanks, Ishmailites!

https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/ishmailites/UGiLqPRJ3pw

May 26, 2014

CHAPTER 86 The Tail

What tenderness there is in that preliminary touch! Had this tail any prehensile power, I should straightway bethink me of Darmonodes' elephant that so frequented the flower-market, and with low salutations presented nosegays to damsels, and then caressed their zones.

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The Faerie Queene meets The Little Mermaid

I think that the pursuit of rudiculous interpretations should become a repectable branch of literary criticism.

May 25, 2014

CHAPTER 82 The Honor and Glory of Whaling

…St. George's whale might have crawled up out of the sea on the beach; and considering that the animal ridden by St. George might have been only a large seal, or sea-horse;…

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Melville, Herman. "Moby-Dick." Harlequin, 2009. iBooks.
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