blue mooooon
"My obsession is blue moon... the best I have found is that it represents an improbable event, and goes back to the following 14th century poem:
Winifred, thou art as harde as manne hath knewe
and cruelle as ye wildebeest doth shew
Thou wilt ne'er love me, I trewe,
until ye moone goeth blue
Actually, I made that one up. Here is another explanation which one hopes is not a figment of febrile fantasy:
The original sense is that of an absurd event that can never occur. The moon is never really blue and once in a blue moon is akin to when pigs fly. (Well actually, when a lot of dust is kicked up into the atmosphere, the moon can appear blue. The eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 caused the moon to turn blue, as did late Indian monsoons in 1927, and Canadian forest fires in 1951.)
The term dates to a 1528 anonymous poem Rede me and be nott wrothe, For I say no things but trothe:
Yf they saye the mone is belewe,
We must believe that it is true.
The modern formulation "blue moon" first appears in 1821. Modern usage holds that a blue moon is a rare, but not impossible, event.
The astronomical definition began in 1932 with the Maine Farmer's Almanac. That periodical defined a blue moon as a season with four full moons rather than the usual three. Given that the seasons are defined by the equinoxes and solstices and not the months, this means a year can have twelve full moons, and each month one, yet have one season with four--a blue moon. In 1946, amateur astronomer James Hugh Pruett published an article in which he misinterpreted the Maine rule to mean two full moons in one month. From there the error seems to have propagated--even being repeated in the original game of Trivial Pursuit, which is probably the primary reason for this definition to have spread so widely and quickly."
I want to write about "Wicked", but... no time.
Re. rereading of TTT: the battle of Helm's Deep has just been won. Squee!