Fishy Beatings

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Nice work.

Temperature Fish Hat

Misheard lyrics from Sean Pauls Temperature.

 

Actually I think these may be the correct official lyrics.

Sean Paul doesn't even come from Angola.

Journey To The West in Space and Time

It's Chinese new year.  Being so this months book cover is a questionable comic book interpretation of the famous Journey To The West story: Adventure of Karate Pig, Ninja Flounder & The 4-D Monkey.

 

This Hong Kong comic, printed in English, features the monkey king travelling around the universe on dubiously connected quests.  It's the year 2988 and the all new four-dimensional (?) monkey king called Sun is created, not from a stone egg, but in a laboratory.  Likewise are his companions, no not Pigsy and Sandy, but Piggy the Karate Pig and Fishy the Ninja Flounder.  It goes without saying that the heavenly armies and demons that Monkey battles are space aliens.  But I said it anyway.

 

 

Piggy is drawn with a Hitler moustache.

 

Oh Four Tuna

O Fortuna is actually a medieval Latin Goliardic poem written early in the 13th century.  Some time around 1935-36, O Fortuna was set to music by the German composer Carl Orff as a part of movement Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi of his cantata Carmina Burana.  Orff's musical setting of the poem has become immensely popular and has been performed by countless classical and popular music artists. It features in numerous movies and television commercials and has become one of the most played classical music pieces in the past 75 years.

If you listen closely you're realise it's a song all about food.

 

The original medieval poem is a complaint about fate and the Roman giddess Fortuna, the personification of luck.  Here's the original  Latin Goliardic version with translation:

 

O Fortuna velut luna statu variabilis, semper crescis aut decrescis; vita detestabilis nunc obdurat et tunc curat ludo mentis aciem, egestatem, potestatem dissolvit ut glaciem. Sors immanis et inanis, rota tu volubilis, status malus, vana salus semper dissolubilis, obumbrata et velata michi quoque niteris; nunc per ludum dorsum nudum fero tui sceleris. Sors salutis et virtutis michi nunc contraria, est affectus et defectus semper in angaria. Hac in hora sine mora corde pulsum tangite; quod per sortem sternit fortem, mecum omnes plangite!

O Fortune, like the moon you are changeable, ever waxing and waning; hateful life first oppresses and then soothes as fancy takes it; poverty and power it melts them like ice. Fate – monstrous and empty, you whirling wheel, you are malevolent, well-being is vain and always fades to nothing, shadowed and veiled you plague me too; now through the game I bring my bare back to your villainy. Fate is against me in health and virtue, driven on and weighted down, always enslaved. So at this hour without delay pluck the vibrating strings; since Fate strikes down the strong man, everyone weep with me!

 

April Fish

Happy New Year!  It's an April Fish!

Sometimes referred to as All Fools' Day, 1st April is not a legal holiday, but its a good excuse for me to not turn up to work and is recognised internationally as a day for practical jokes and general nonsense.

In the Middle Ages, New Year's Day was celebrated on the 25th of March in most European towns. In some areas of France, New Year's was a week-long holiday ending on the 1st of April.  The use of the 1st of January as New Year's Day was common in France by the mid-sixteenth century, and slick French city folk would play tricks on those backwater folk from the villages if they came to town on the 1st of April believing it to be new years day.

The traditional joke to play on someone in France, still practiced today in places, is poisson d'avril (meaning April's fish), which involves attempting to attach a paper fish to the victim's back without being noticed. This is also widespread in other nations, like Italy, where the term Pesce d'aprile (again meaning April's fish) is also used to refer to any jokes done during the day.

The whole fish thing is a reference to the abundance of newborn fish that were in French rivers at this time of year, and imply a person is as easy to fool as a newly hatched fish.  And such frivolity it is to see your country neighbour go home with a fish stuck to his back.