Or possibly it was laid out that way, but the original was lost during the Great Vowel Shift and we now see an artistic reconstruction by Bruce McCall.

I've been reading too much Tim Powers. (Did I mention that Declare is out in mass-market paperback?)

(If you think this is a joke, you've never seen The Elias Baseball Analyst. Last edition was 1989. Alas.)

Hmm, "for a monet I wasn't sure if you were talking about the web..." AHA! You were distracted by a painting of some water lilies!

Is that right? Isitisitisit? :-)

Titivolus vincit!

I think, though, that "Zounds!" &c. are euphemisms for earlier theatrical swearing, which was outlawed from licensed theatres and publishing by an, um, Bible-minded monarch, James Stuart. Probably the ad campaign depicted at Broughton is part of what brought that about.

By the way, my explanation for the stylistic differences between the central figure and the surrounding ones (several of whom seem to have the same face) is that it's the result of a Cartoon Jam.

Cf. "Time Travellers Guide to Stuart England" at <http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/guide17/part05.html> for the early C. 17 attitude toward swearing. If memory serves, the Tudors kept a court that was rather loose-mouthed on religious niceties, though very careful of avoiding any whiff of Politics.

Yes, all that at the same time, and the habitants are all delusional schizophrenics.

http://villainsupply.com/doomsday.html

Definitely a page with some potential for making T. fall down and go boom.

Reminds me of the evil overlord lists.

Avram, Christ eating a guinea pig is not one of my characteristic hallucinations. Mine tend to involve animate misbehavior on the part of hitherto inanimate objects.

Bob, I don't know about euphemisms, but "zounds" is a contraction of "God's wounds", and "s'blood" is a contraction of "God's blood". And if (as the site suggests) swearing by sacramental symbols and objects counts , French Canadians are still doing it.

I've known villainsupply.com for some time now -- and yes, I found it while hunting for variant Evil Overlord lists. I won't claim I've been from one end of this galaxy to the other, but I have seen a lot of strange stuff.

Under Jacobean strictures on speech and the theatre (and in particular the accompanying fines and punishments) people quickly learned to say "Zounds!" or to swear "by Pharaoh's foot!"

The euphemisms and substitutions presumably saves Our Lord from gradual dismemberment as he uncomplainingly covered the bad debts left by false oaths. Or did so well enough that those who insisted on a higher degree of verbal purity had to move to Massachusetts to found a more Pious Commonwealth.

(Ah, if only they could see the Confederacy of Scofflaws and Generation of Pottymouths for whom they prepared the ground.)

JMF, Unstable Narcolepton Emitter

http://www.humorscope.com/

I swear I was researching the Surrealists Honest
Yours DMS

Of course, I just returned from a week in Oklahoma with my parents and my sense of humor may not yet be properly restored.

MKK

MKK

Just so you'll know, I forwarded the rose FAQs to two or three people, at least one of whom appreciated it, and another of whom I haven't heard from yet. One question I didn't see on there: "What is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose?"

All this Christ Child stuff reminds me of an early National Lampoon article, a memoir by His cousin, which mentions how Jeez was kind of a weirdo, and the other kids used to 'leper' him, running away and shouting "Ding ding! Unclean!"

Then there was the Christmas when all the grandkids (our generation) received ceramic Baby Jesi. There was some conferring about what to do with them. The unimaginative were all for simply hiding or losing them somewhere. I wanted to try and collect enough to have a Baby J chess set, but since this wasn't realistic, I fell back on the notion of obtaining a second one, then drilling holes in the tops of their heads to make delightful salt and pepper shakers.

Kip

ps: What does "Remember info" do? I originally guessed it was so I wouldn't have to retype that stuff every time, but that doesn't seem to be the case. "Forget Personal Information" -- at our age, do we really need a button for this?

DM, I'd seen it before, but that is in fact one darned strange painting.

Kip, "A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose" was Gertrude misunderstanding one of Pabs' complaints about Alice's boring cooking.

"Remember info" is supposed to keep you from having to retype it every time. It came with the template. I haven't tried the "Forget Personal Information" button because I'm afraid it would work.