Folly of the Faithful Canine

In the mid-19th century, lobsters were eaten
By paupers and people in jail.
The rich preferred animals raised on the land,
Which would make for a pricier sale.

This started to change in the late 1800s.
Chefs learned to keep lobsters alive
Until it was time they were cooked, so the meat
Remained fresh and the flavor would thrive.

Increasing demand led to rapid decline
In the number of lobsters to find.
Both factors made lobsters a luxury meal
With extravagant prices assigned.

In German lore, a kobold is a mostly household sprite.
It’s apt to do domestic chores for those who treat it right,
But if it feels insulted, it will soon resort to pranks
Or worse, so folks would often leave it milk to give it thanks.

This kobold is invisible until it takes a form.
A little human figure with a sharp red cap’s the norm,
But sometimes it’s an animal, especially a cat,
Explaining why the feline race is mischievous like that.

Some kobolds make a shop, a ship, or underground their home.
The last type is conflated with an older term for “gnome.”
Our cobalt gets its name from kobolds spoiling silver mines.
(And “nickel” meant a goblin, as derived along such lines.)

The English-speaking world adopted “kobold” rather late,
In print in 1830. Its reception wasn’t great,
Until the rise of RPGs, which call for lots of foes
From fantasy, including ones not everybody knows.

To make them more distinctive from a bunch of other races,
The games made kobolds canine-like, not least within their faces.
The later D&D type’s more a lizard or a dragon.
If you see one of those, it’s on the D&D bandwagon.

Indeed, the modern reptile’s gotten popular these days.
At least among the nerds like me, it almost is a craze.
The kobold may be wicked, but it’s made to look so cute,
In contrast to the ogre, goblin, orc, and other brutes.

Some claim the Ten Commandments form the basis of our laws.
I find that that position, at a glance, has many flaws.
To wit, the First Amendment grants our freedom of religion.
We may have other gods and icons per the founders’ vision.
While taking Yahweh’s name in vain in some states has been banned,
Such laws are all repealed or unenforced throughout the land.
For working on the sabbath, there’s no penalty at all.
Dishonoring ones’ folks would be a judgment tough to call.
It’s true most kills are not allowed, tho people disagree
On where to draw the lines for what is murder as they see.
Adultery was banned in a majority of states
Until the past few decades (hey, it’s hard to validate).
The ban on theft, like that on murder, gen’rally is plain,
Tho government enacts some things like eminent domain.
False witness is forbidden when it’s perjury or libel,
But lies are more permissible in law than in the Bible.
And coveting is difficult to prove within a court.
So only some commandments are in U.S. law, in short.

I don't recall where I first learned of Jenny Greenteeth, the dangerous amphibious fairy from English folklore. It wasn't in A Field Guide to Demons, Fairies, Fallen Angels, and Other Subversive Spirits, which I still check on occasion. Regardless, Molly O'Neill's 2025 debut novel sounded promising.

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On a whim the other day, I picked up a Silver Age collection of Doom Patrol comics. It may be a while before I pick up a non-graphic novel.

We’ve all seen gags where elephants are terrified of mice.
This has a real-life basis, but it’s rather imprecise.
Some people think the fear is that a mouse runs up the trunk
Or chews a foot. This isn’t known to happen; I call bunk.
Most elephants in zoos get used to mice around their hay.
The spooked ones prob’ly don’t expect to find mice in the way.
Perhaps the feral elephants are harder to surprise,
But swift, small movements tend to startle mammals any size,
And elephants can smell and hear much better than they see.
They do fear one small animal: the common honeybee.

A pattern many folks decry
Is overuse of vocal fry,
By which I mean a rasp or creak
That happens often when we speak.

The sound is easy to produce
When vocal cords are very loose.
Some languages, like Finnish, use
The method for linguistic cues.

In English, it’s a rarer sound
That used to be most often found
In British males: Just hear Shere Khan
Or C.S. Lewis or James Bond,

Whose use of falling intonation
In Received Pronunciation
Featured vocal fry a lot.
Today the sound is widely thought

To be a U.S. female thing.
Consider how some pop stars sing.
Perhaps they mean to imitate
The register of males of late

To sound authoritative, but
Alas, it doesn’t make the cut.
It might suggest incompetence,
Dishonesty, low confidence,

Or other undesired traits,
A study seems to demonstrate.
Of course, we will need more than one
To say much research has been done.

For my part, I don’t really care
Or notice when the sound is there,
Except in songs, which make me think,
“Increase your effort, lest you stink!”

If you were born last century, it’s likely that you’ve seen
A tongue map showing where our sense of taste is extra keen
For bitter, sour, salty, sweet, and possibly umami.
It’s not entirely false, but it’s been taught in ways quite balmy.

When Harvard’s Edwin Boring made the map in ’42,
He meant to show the thresholds for the maxima he knew.
For instance, at the tip is where we best taste food that’s sweet.
The difference, tho, is minuscule; the sections aren’t discrete.

Some readers misinterpreted and jumped to the conclusion
That nothing but the tip detected sweetness. What confusion!
For generations, schools would teach the map as absolute,
Yet smarter students noticed it was something to dispute.

Once again, I have given up on finishing a book. But for the first time in nearly seven years, I feel like saying more than a paragraph about it anyway.

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I think I'll try a mystery next: The Cat Who Blew the Whistle. Lilian Jackson Braun's series is reputedly kind of insipid, but I bet it's cute.

It's easy to tell from the cover that Yoon Ha Lee's 2019 novel is written with younger readers in mind. For starters, the top reads "Rick Riordan Presents," and Riordan is best known for the Percy Jackson series. (Further reading tells me that Disney publishes all books with that header.) Second, the one illustration is a little more cartoony than usual, albeit not to the point of evoking comedy. I knew I'd finish before long.

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It's been almost a year since my last pre-1900 novel. I think I'll try Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe.

I'm not going to summarize the premises of the Scholomance trilogy again, so click here if you want a refresher. Fortunately, the second volume fills in new readers nicely as it goes along.

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Up next is Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee. Looks like it blurs the line between fantasy and sci-fi.