apropos of absolutely nothing at all

[extemporanea]

My late papa was always very fond of reciting that deliberately pretentious and jargonistic version of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" which goes as follows:

Scintillate, scintillate, globule vivific,
How do I ponder thy nature specific,
Poised up above in the ether capacious,
Closely resembling a gem carbonaceous.
As a child I always heard "ether

Comments

[herne_kzn]

Nay, nay. 'Tis, "fain would I fathom thy nature specific."
I had a very similar response to ether capacious, further confirming my dark suspicions about our youthful minds.

[extemporanea]

Hey! no dissing of my memories! that's the version I recollect. Although "fain" is a lovely word that isn't used nearly often enough.

Did your family also have a tradition of "gladly the cross-eyed bear"? Because if so, I'm almost certainly your Super Sekrit Aunt.

[veratiny]

My granny taught it to me "fain"....although I heard fame :-)

She also taught me...
Rump Steak tiddly ache
Super skinny bomsha
Esatilly mamakwa
Dogatilly kwa kwa

I still have no idea what it means!
But the best thing she taught me (by far) was:

Ooey goey custard, nice phlegm pie
Dead dogs' liver and squashed cats eye
Dry blood sandwiches piled up thick
All washed down with a nice cup of sick

[extemporanea]

I think a brief "eeeuw" suffices here...

Eeeuw.

[strawberryfrog]

After watching several 1-hour videos today, the 5 minutes of guild seems positively frantic.

PS: An "ethakapacious" just sounds like some kind of rapacious, big-jawed dinosaur to me.

[extemporanea]

Certainly not! you can't be poised up above in a rapacious dinosaur, unless it's something pterodactyloid and it's just eaten you. The Ethakapacious is clearly a realm of some astral or cosmic sort.

The Guild packs actually a fair wallop of plot into their super-short episodes, and they really repay a re-watch for the detail.

[strawberryfrog]

Pterodactyls have jaws

[anonymous]

I once read someone's account of how they used to hear the US anthem as "say can you see by the daunserly light". A lovely word. It really should exist.

scroob

[extemporanea]

Mondegreens are lovesome things, god wot, but particularly when they invent new words entirely. "Daunserly" is, indeed, a pleasingly euphonious invention: suggests a sort of studied grace, like an archaic form of "dancerly".

My mother's grandmother had invention along similar lines from a hymn tune: "Pity mice in Plicity." She used to get terribly upset about all the poor little unhappy mice in Plicity, which she conceived of as a sort of mouse jail.