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Big Time F-Bombs, etc.

Rich Galen

Monday, June 28, 2004

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• "... Petard ...": Hoist with his own petard (actually petar) is from Hamlet, Act III, scene 4. A petard is (was), according the Merriam-Webster's unabridged:

  1 : a metal or wood case containing an explosive for use in breaking down a door or gate or in breaching a wall

  2 : a firework that explodes with a loud report

  Of course, for those of us who, in high school had read The Catcher in the Rye 735 times because it was the first legitimate book we were allowed to read containing the F-word, assumed that Shakespeare's use of the term "petard" and the image of someone being hoist upon one was a dandy double-entendre.

  But that's not the good part. The etymology of "petard" is as follows, again from the M-W Unabridged:

  Middle French, from peter to break wind (from pet expulsion of intestinal gas, from Latin peditum, from neuter of peditus, past participle of pedere to break wind) + -ard; akin to Greek bdein to break wind silently, Russian bzdet'

• "... Peanut ...": This is, as you already know, from the film The Princess Bride. Vizzini is frustrated and demands that Fezzik (the giant) stops rhyming everything. Inigo Montoya, decides to rub salt into Vizzini's raw nerves with this dialog:

  Inigo Montoya: You have a great gift for rhyme.
  Fezzik: Yes, yes, some of the time.
  Vizzini: Enough of that.
  Inigo Montoya: Fezzik, are there rocks ahead?
  Fezzik: If there are, we all be dead.
  Vizzini: No more rhymes now, I mean it.
  Fezzik: Anybody want a peanut?
  Vizzini: DYEEAAHHHHHH.

• Mullfoto of the Day:
  
  
  
  
  This is a photo from the corner of South Union and King Streets in Old Town Alexandria, Va. This may be the last television antenna left in Northern Virginia.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• Catchy Caption of the Day

  
  Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards explaining that there is a painting of him hanging in his parlor in which he, mysteriously, looks younger and younger.

  Robert Galbraith/Reuters