as per your request...

...linda ronstadt, saucy pirate wench.

The internets just got a whole lot awesomer.

Thanks to Sydd Souza's Pirate Speak Translator, which translates not only individual phrases, but entire websites, including this one.

I'm going to go finish reading the New York Pirate Times now, which reports of tropical storm Ernesto that "th' center be expected t' cross o'er th' chain o' isles, arrr south o' mainland Florida by this evenin'" and that, further south, "Brazilian Lass Has 14-Pound Baby."

They'll swash your buckle, alright.

Ever Google a word or phrase that lives in your head but that you're not sure is part of the generally accepted English idiom? Well, as I was commenting on C. Q. Cumber's post on the etymology of "skylark," I tested out the phrase "pirate wench" in my Google toolbar.

Ever Google "pirate wench"? You find some interesting sites.

P.S. Now we need to have an event. My costume shall reinvent the meaning of smelly pirate hooker.

Manatees not dumb, just weird

Fascinating item in the NYTimes today about manatee brains. Apparently they're very small, and smooth, which usually suggests dumbness, but scientists have now decided they're just extremely well-adapted to a lifestyle that involves basically doing nothing. Let's hear it for the manatee!

The story also has this exciting but sad tidbit: "Another sirenian, Steller’s sea cow, lived in the Bering Sea and exceeded 5,000 pounds. It was hunted into extinction in the 1700’s." Damn you 18th century! Must you ruin everything??

The sea cow in action:

Nautical Volcabulary

As LEVIATHANs, I think it is very important that we cultivate an expansive nautical vocabulary. Just as "'Pha," the English-speaking dolphin hero of The Day of the Dolphin, showed us the power of language to unite man and sea-creature, so too must we learn the language of the sea if we ever want to understand the inner-workings of the heart.

In light of this, I offer the following sea-themed volcabulary word (Webster's August 27 Word of the Day).

skylark \SKYE-lark\ verb

1 : to run up and down the rigging of a ship in sport
*2 : frolic, sport

Did you know?
As far as we know, people were skylarking at sea before they were larking on land. "Skylarking" was originally a term used by seamen for their scampering about on the rigging of ships. The first known use of the word in print is from 1809, though the term was part of the sailor's vernacular before that. "Lark," meaning "to engage in harmless fun or mischief," didn?t get jotted down until 1813. Whether or not the meanings of these words came about from the song and/or behavior of birds is uncertain. One theory of the verb "lark" is that it began as a misinterpretation of the verb "lake," which in British dialect means "to play or frolic."

Although I realize the temptation to use more land-locked words as you scamper about the riggings of your daily lives (in sport, of course), please endeavor to use the word "skylark" at least 5 times today so as to make it a part of your working vocabulary. After all, if we don't use the language of the sea, who will?

at a store near you

I'm not sure I can recommend watching the 2006 remake of "The Poseidon Adventure" without the use of buttshakers (sp?), but it is now possible to own it for your very own.



Sorry the pic is shrimpy. A teensy hooray for Poseidon.

in the news...

Let's hear it for the fuzzy dwarf lionfish!


(http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/22/science/22fish.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)

The LEVIATHAN backlog.

Previous traces of LEVIATHAN activity on the internet have been collected under a single tag on my LiveJournal, for anyone looking to delve into the prehistory of this blog.

In other news, Poor Mojo's Giant Squid recently answered the question of how many sharks there are in the whole wide world:

Ten.

There are but ten sharks in the world. Thus have there ever been, thus shall there ever be.

Sharks, like unto that great land beast, the Mountain Ash, propagate in a manner asexual, by a system of budding, self-bifurcation and extrusion. Sharks are sexless and joyless beasts, like all creatures who reproduce without the aid of slow music, lubrication, thrusting and alcohol. When one of the members of the "decashark"--which, in all honesty, is best considered as a single entity unto itself, although the unity of its disparate selves is not visible to humans. simple and flawed eyes or to your poor sense of spatial/temporal dimensions--feels threatened, he does but bud through the extradimensional spaces a hive-cloud of a thousand. These hive-cloud echoes of each of the Ur-sharks is what populates the vast shoals of the deep.

Follow the link to learn more, including how "the shark is like the mighty electron."

Clasp your hands behind your head. I intend to search your offices.

Traditionally, the scope of Leviathan's work has been restricted to film with a certain content, viz. nautical narratives. Recent research suggests, however, that this narrow view obscures a larger treasure trove of truths; an hypothesis: every movie featuring Peter Lorre falls into the genus of Leviathan pictures (broadly construed) because, as a matter of fact, Peter Lorre is an aquatic organism. (Whether this proposal actually broadens the definition from 'nautical narratives' to 'nautical narratives plus ...' , or whether it simply points out that Peter Lorre movies are nautical narratives, is irrelevant.)

The evidence? In Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961) , Lorre states (enacting Commodore Lucian Emery)
that he regards himself as a "personal friend" to all "sea creatures." He then proceeds to push a three foot styrofoam shark through the murky waters that he is standing in, clad in formal dress and a rubber apron, on account that the shark has been drugged and needs water to flow over its gills.

Our question, however, is whether love - when sincerely felt, and requited - suffices for sameness of kind. In this case, the bonds of friendship are greater than the divisions of species. Lorre becomes aquatic through a process similar to that which Danto described as "transfiguration," in which an ordinary real thing becomes an artwork, as if by magic. In our case, the unreal Emery's sea-creature-status is transferred to the real Lorre, by the same sort of seeming magic that has left all of us, at one point or another, reeling for an explanation of the transcendental sublimnity of art.

One objection that can be dispensed with post haste is the worry that Lorre, in persona as Conseil in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, makes an attack on a giant squid - how could one sea-creature (albeit one in creepy-bug-eyed-Austrio-Hungarian form) attack another? Is not the giant squid a "personal friend" as well?

But we must not forget that in friendship affection is not always constant - that our natural disposition to loathe the Other may inevitably surface, like some black mass from the depths - and its surfacing may even be justified. But have any of us friends (or family, or lovers) that we have not metaphorically hacked at the flailing tentacles of with an axe? Would we not leap into the sea, crying "Professor, Professor!," were the same friend to fall overboard? Such is love! Let us praise it, and speak plainly and honestly about it! And let us accept, then, that Lorre's love for the sea creatures is no less real than any of our terrestrial loves, and, therefore, that he, and his films, deserve our scrutiny - if not our love.

And now, a word from our sponsor...

There Leviathan,
Hugest of all living creatures, on the deep
Stretched like a promontory, sleeps or swims,
And seems a moving land, and at his gills
Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out, a sea.
--Paradise Lost

Well played, John Milton, well played.