Warm and Witty Side of Attila the Hun (18 page)

But there was nothing lovable about these people. These were bands of marauding, rapacious, murdering, predatory thieves. Lest the reader continue to entertain the romantic image, he or she is invited to consider the lyrics of the following old sea shanty:

 

Sailed I have on the open sea, waging war on the ships of kings.

Skilled I am at piracy, ‘tis a skill that battle brings.

Long have I sailed this outlaw hull, ‘
neath
the flag of the bone and skull,

Plowing through the waves and the foam of a sea of dead men.

 

Give me a cutlass sharp and bright, give me a swab to cool my gun,

Give me a hot and a lusty fight, give me wine and give me rum.

Like a plague I roam the world, killing the men and raping the girls,

Stealing silver, gold, and gems from the hands of dead men.

 

Blackbeard was a pirate bold, died he did in Caroline.

Captain Kidd was a lover of gold, and they hanged him for his crime.

Henry Morgan laughed at fear, roamed the waves as a buccaneer.

All these comrades of the sword and the sea are dead men.

 

When I die and go to hell, I will sit on Satan's knee.

What a tale of terror I'll tell of my life of piracy.

Many are the thieveries I've made, rape and murder my stock in trade.

I have drenched the world entire with the blood of dead men.

 

Fifteen men on a dead man's chest.
Yo
ho
ho
and a bottle of rum!

Drink! And the devil be done for the rest!
Yo
ho
ho
and a bottle of rum!

Raise the Jolly Roger high! Fly the skull in the blood-red sky!

Fifteen thieves drinking rum in a toast to the graves of dead men.

 

There are many versions of this old song, including a fragment preserved in Robert Louis Stevenson's definitive pirate novel,
Treasure Island
.
In
none of them are the pirates romantic,
lovable rogues.

 

Speaking of horrible people saying horrible things, this is a statement made by a Southern sheriff in the 1950s.
(Racism warning!)
"Nigger kills a white man, that's first degree murder. White man kills a nigger, that's justifiable homicide. Nigger kills another nigger, that's one less nigger."

 

One of the major figures in the
Risorgimento
(the "resurgence" of Italian national self awareness after the Napoleonic Wars) was Giuseppe Mazzini, the "heart" of Italian unification.
(Giuseppe Garibaldi was the “sword” and
Camillo
di
Cavour the “brain.”) Mazzini's name is associated
with nationalism, but he would not have agreed with the association. The word "nationalism" today means a fanatical, even dangerous devotion to one's nation, not a love of one's country. He made
reference to the "good nationalist," which we would call a patriot, and the "bad nationalist," which we
would call... well, a nationalist. He explained the difference in a delightful metaphor, as follows:

"The good nationalist thinks of his nation as a musical instrument. Italy, let us say, is an oboe, and France is a bassoon. Germany is a trumpet and England a clavier. Every musician loves his
instrument, and that is as it should be. It takes years of dedication and labor to master an instrument,
and one cannot be dedicated so intensely to more than one. But even as the oboe cannot perform only solo pieces, neither can the clavier or the bassoon or the trumpet. But together with all the other instruments—the timpani of Russia, the viola of Spain, the flute of Poland, the drum of Ireland, and all the others—they constitute the orchestra of humanity, and together they perform the Symphony of Mankind.

"But the bad nationalist? He wants an entire orchestra consisting of nothing but oboes."

 

The pyramids of Giza, especially the Great Pyramid of Cheops, have been the subjects of
a great deal of foolish speculation on the part of intellectually uncomplicated people ... they
were build by space aliens, the pyramidal shape focuses alpha rays, they were launching pads for
ancient Egyptian aircraft, etc. ... but the pyramids were royal tombs pure and simple, nothing more. People who think otherwise drive legitimate Egyptologists crazy, and they routinely refer to such people as "
pyramidiots
."

 

Three questions about clothing:

One: Why do people wear underwear? Answer: Because in late medieval and early
modern Europe most people had only two or three changes of clothing, and these items of apparel were so valuable that they were actually handed down from generation to generation as
articles of inheritance. Underwear was invented to protect these valuable possessions from being
soiled.

Two: Why do men's and women's clothing—shirts, blouses, pants, trousers, etc.—
button on opposite sides? Answer: In the 18
^th
and 19
^th
centuries, only wealthy people had button
and buttonhole clothes. (The middle class used "hook and eye" apparel, and the poor tied their clothing together with rope.) When a wealthy man got dressed, he dressed himself; when a wealthy woman got dressed, she was dressed by her maid. The maid, thus facing her mistress, dealt with buttons and buttonholes arranged identically to those of the master, i.e., in opposite
positions.

Three: why do men's jackets have buttons on the sleeve? Answer: Napoleon ordered buttons to be placed on the sleeves of his soldiers' uniforms to discourage them from wiping their noses on them.

 

Question: why is it that in
America
when a man and a woman are walking down the
street together, the man walks on the outside toward the road and the woman walks on the
inside toward the buildings? And why is it that in
Europe
their positions are reversed (man on
the inside, woman on the outside)?

Answer: in America the man walks on the street side in case a passing car splashes mud,
which will then hit him and not her; in Europe (and this goes back to urban life in the late Middle Ages), the man walks on the inside in case a chamber pot is being emptied out the
window of a nearby building. The human waste will thus fall on him and not her. Any way you look at it, the woman is unscathed and the man needs a bath.

 

(Warning: explicit language alert!)

In 1066 A.D. French-speaking Vikings called Normans crossed the English Channel and conquered England. The consequences of the Norman Conquest included an interesting development in the English language. The French of the Normans and the Anglo-Saxon (i.e.,
German) of the English co-existed for centuries until eventually, in the 13
^th
and 14
^th
centuries, a
language we can recognize as English emerged. But the social stratification of 11
^th
century
England is still visible in the different words we have for the same things. The Normans were
the ruling class. Thus the polite words for delicate matters are to this day words of French (i.e.,
Latin) origin, while the common, vulgar words are of Anglo-Saxon (i.e., Germanic) origin.
Examples:

In matters relating to sex and the human body's sexual characteristics, we have the
following bifurcated pairs, the first the polite/Franco-Latin, the second the vulgar/Anglo-
Saxon/German: coitus/fuck; vagina/cunt; penis/prick; mammary/tit; scrotum/balls; anus/ass.

In matters relating to bodily functions: defecate/shit; urinate/piss; perspire/sweat; consume/eat;
flatulate
/fart.

And in culinary matters, when the animal is alive and wandering the fields pissing/urinating and shitting/defecating,
flatulating
/farting here and there as it ingests/eats, it has a German name. When it is has been prepared for human consumption/eating, it has a
Franco-Latin name. The German hen
(
Hahri
)
becomes the French poultry
(
poulet
).
The German
cow
(
Kuh
)
becomes the French beef
(
boeuf
)
The German lamb
(
Lamm
)
becomes the French mutton
(mouton).
And as for these creatures themselves, the old Anglo-Saxon word "deer" originally meant any animal, as it still does in modern German
(Tier.)
But we call them "animals," from the Latin
animus,
meaning things that have the life force, living things.

(Incidentally, and unrelated to the above, "asparagus" was originally "sparrow grass",
until people started mispronouncing it.)

 

Palindromes (i.e., sentences that read the same forwards and backwards):

American newspaper headline referring to Theodore Roosevelt's seizure of the Canal
Zone in Panama: A MAN, A PLAN, A CANAL: PANAMA!

British newspaper headline on the day Napoleon was exiled to the island of Elba: ABLE
WAS I ERE I SAW ELBA.

The last Shah (king) of Iran died in exile in 1979, leading to the following headline in an English-language newspaper published in India: NO EVIL SHAHS LIVE ON.

Religious themes: DOGMA IN MY HYMN: I AM GOD. And, when Adam and Eve first
met: MADAM, IN EDEN I'M ADAM.

Clever, if meaningless: NO X IN NIXON.

And, in this humble writer's opinion, the greatest of all palindromes, great because it was
a complete accident. The newspaper editor who hastily wrote the headline for a reporter's article had no idea that he had composed a delightful palindrome.

In 1988 the financially strapped Democrats sought to raise funds by hosting entertainment events at which stars of stage, screen, and TV would perform for paying
audiences, thus infusing badly needed money into their presidential campaign. One such event was a comedy festival, which was duly covered by the local press.

The story was unremarkable. But the headline is unsurpassed.

STAR COMEDY BY DEMOCRATS!

(Warning! Almost every one of these observations about ethnicities is an insult. If you are thin-
skinned or oversensitive, don't read them. Rest assured that I am an equal opportunity offender,
and no Western nationality has been spared, including my own. This compendium includes quotes, quips,
and real stuff.)

 

Italians: ...
are well known for their disregard for authority. "It is not impossible to govern Italians," Benito Mussolini once observed. "It is simply pointless."

 

Germans:
... in contrast to Italians, are well known for their abject obedience to authority. Lenin and Trotsky were discussing the chances of a Communist revolution in
Germany
in 1918. Trotsky expressed the opinion that it could never happen. "If German
revolutionaries planned to seize control of a train station," he explained, "they would purchase
tickets first." (See below for more on the Germans)

 

Russians:
.. .are generally regarded as one of the hardest-drinking people in the world. (See Irish, below.) An old story goes as follows: "Oh no!" says the old man. "The Tsar has raised the tax on vodka." "Grandfather," says the child, "does this mean that you will drink less?" "No, my child," the old man replies. "It means that you will eat less."

 

Irish: ...
another hard-drinking people with more than a dollop of national pride, have been self-characterized by the old Irish saying that "God created whiskey so the Irish
wouldn't rule the world." Sigmund Freud's observation on the Irish was that they are the only
nation for whom psychoanalysis would be a waste of time. Whether this was a compliment or a insult is a debatable point.

 

Austrians: ...
were very enthusiastic Nazis until
Germany
lost the war, and then
suddenly became the first victims of Nazi aggression. (For example, though making up only 10%
of the post-1938 population of the Third Reich, Austrians comprised 20% of the S.S.) "
Austria
," it has been said, "had two great historical achievements. It has convinced the world that Hitler
was a German and that Beethoven was an Austrian."

 

Americans: ...
were said by Charles Dickens (no admirer of the
U.S.A.
) to be
"The only nation to go from barbarism to decadence with no intervening period of civilization."
On a possibly more positive note, one wag observed that the average American believes that
America should rule the world, his state should run America, his city should run his state, and he
should be mayor.

 

German Jews: ...
were described by Chaim Weitzman, an early Zionist of
Russian Jewish background, as the most obnoxious people in the world. "They have two
predominant qualities," he said. "They possess all the charm of the Germans, and all the modesty
of the Jews."