Rush has caught it! He's caught the WHANGDEPOOTENAWAH!

[TacticalPeek]

Apologies to Ambrose Bierce. Best read aloud with adequate recreational reinforcement.


WHANGDEPOOTENAWAH, n.
In the Ojibwa tongue, disaster; an unexpected affliction that strikes hard.

Should you ask me whence this laughter,
Whence this audible big-smiling,
With its labial extension,
With its maxillar distortion
And its diaphragmic rhythmus
Like the billowing of an ocean,
Like the shaking of a carpet,
I should answer, I should tell you:
From the great deeps of the spirit,
From the unplummeted abysmus
Of the soul this laughter welleth
As the fountain, the gug-guggle,
Like the river from the canon,
To entoken and give warning
That my present mood is sunny.
Should you ask me further question --
Why the great deeps of the spirit,
Why the unplummeted abysmus
Of the soule extrudes this laughter,
This all audible big-smiling,
I should answer, I should tell you
With a white heart, tumpitumpy,
With a true tongue, honest Injun:
Pigboy Limpballs, he has Caught It,
Caught the Whangdepootenawah!

Is't the sandhill crane, the shankank,
Standing in the marsh, the kneedeep,
Standing silent in the kneedeep
With his wing-tips crossed behind him
And his neck close-reefed before him,
With his bill, his william, buried
In the down upon his bosom,
With his head retracted inly,
While his shoulders overlook it?
Does the sandhill crane, the shankank,
Shiver grayly in the north wind,
Wishing he had died when little,
As the sparrow, the chipchip, does?
No 'tis not the Shankank standing,
Standing in the gray and dismal
Marsh, the gray and dismal kneedeep.
No, 'tis peerless Pigboy Limpballs,
Realizing that he's Caught It,
Caught the Whangdepootenawah!

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Boozhoo.

Anishinabe?

[TacticalPeek]

2. Shameless Kick.

'Cause its such fun to read out loud.

[TacticalPeek]

3. Below shame kick.

:)

[Stephanie]

4. delightful

Sending to my friends.

It's amazing how HAPPY all this scandal has made us. I haven't felt so happy in THREE years.

[bvar22]

5. Not to be picky, but....

I believe it is Henry W Longfellow to whom you should address any apologies (not that any are required). I enjoyed your piece. Thanks.

[TacticalPeek]

6. I'm willing to apologize to any dead poet (excepting Pound and Celine),

However, I should have credited better, from his Devil's Dictionary:


http://www.online-literature.com/view.php/devilsdictionary/23?term=whangdepootenawah

Or, perhaps apologies on behalf of Bierce to William Cullen Bryan(t), whose "To a Waterfowl" was the delicious target and whose name supplants Pigboy's in the original:


"To a Waterfowl"

Whither, midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou persue
Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean-side?

There is a power whose care
Teaches thy wauy along that pathless coast--
The desert and illimitiable air--
Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned,
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end;
Soon shalt though find a summer home, and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend,
Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart
Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.



William Cullen Bryan, 1815

[E_Zapata]

7. that was indeed oh so much to recite

thank you!