Oddly Enough Blog
News, but not the serious kind
And the morel of this story is…
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Hey Blog Guy, you obviously know a lot about language. I just heard a strange expression, “As dumb as an Italian hunter.” What does that even mean?
It means incredibly dumb, is what it means. At least 17 people have been killed recently in hunting accidents in the mountains and forests of northern Italy, six of them in a single 48-hour period.
Wow, that’s a lot of dead hunters! Even allowing for them shooting each other and similar mishaps. What were they hunting? Bears? Cougars?
Mushrooms.
You’re kidding, right, Blog Guy?
Nope. It seems in their eagerness to protect their secret mushroom troves, hunters are doing their searching in the dark. As a result they are sliding off steep, damp slopes, to their death.
They’re even wearing camouflage to help them disappear, so it’s pretty hard to find them after they fall. One mushroom hunter is still missing.
This is amazing. And the actual falls killed all of them?
So they say, although I prefer to think some of them were only injured by the falls, and then died of embarrassment, alone and still clutching a grubby mushroom.
What do you think is the take-away lesson here?
I suppose it’s this: If you’re watching Italian “Survivor” on TV, and the contestants are a mushroom hunter against an actual mushroom, bet all your money on the fungus.
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A mushroom hunter searches for morels deep in a Croatian forest during the International morel festival near the Crni Lug village in the Croatian national park Risnjak in a 2006 file photo. REUTERS/Nikola Solic
Britain’s Prince Charles smells a mushroom as he meets Japanese farmers at the Enmei tea factory in Shinano, central Japan, October 30, 2008. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
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And there is our very own manly man man! You wont see Charles hunting for morels! Y? Coz he doesnt want any!
Your manly man man there is about to trip his cajones off.
That wacky Prince Charles – he’ll hug anything, no matter how gross.
I mean, just look at Camilla.
I suspect the Big Bad Wolf is to blame for this. And it looks like he has another victim in his sights and will be going after medium-sized yellow riding coat any moment now, as he trips his away along with his basket of ‘goodies’.
Hey it looks like those Italian mushroom hunters are really getting the shittake kicked out of them.
Bad memories. I was 41 before I knew Shiitake wasn’t pronounced “shit-ache.” Boy is my face red.
It isn’t?
Crap. I wonder if they’ll let me re-shoot my guest appearance on “Top Chef.”
Hey Charles! You like smell fungus? Come on over! I’ve got some pretty smelly shrooms in my back yard you can cosy your schnoz up to. Don’t trip, now. I don’t need no royal’s sniffing shrooms dying off here.
@Nosmo … you’re in good form today. Have a doughnut, on me. Shittake, LOL!
@ifly … that is one major magic mushroom. LOL!
Really? The spam basket filter lets through “shit-ache” yet rejects my cockpit joke yesterday? I tell ya that thing is temperamental. Or Doc has an in. I guess I have a ways to go before I can wield that kind of power over the spam basket filter!
@justCAM… dude seriously! Imagine that coupled with some medi-doughnuts..feeling kinda trippy just thinking about it.
I suspect there’s a fungus among us… Hey look at Charles, he’s a fun-guy with a fungi!
I often think about moving to the UK… until I see a picture of Charles. I’m not sure how, but it changes my mind. Any thoughts?
Is it coz you think you will end up with some one like Camilla, drgnbait?
Mr.Pilot,the spam basket likes you too much!
@Shra – you definitely have a point, though Camilla is on my own team… so it’s probably out of fear of ending up with someone just like Charles. Jiminy cremini!!!! What a thought.
Spin, I’m afraid I only speak “Pig Yiddish.” Farshtay? I learned it from watching Schmo in “The Four Stooges.”
Isaac Bashevis Singer was a great writer who wrote in Yiddish. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature. His “Gimpel the Fool” is a must read. I recommend the translation by Saul Bellow, also a Nobel Prize Winner for Literature. One Nobel Prize winner translated by another Nobel Prize Winner. Very rare.
This is what happens when a person devotes his life to the study of comparative literature.
As for me, the most I ever got was a pullet surprise.
An elderly Jewish lady approaches a man at a bus stop in Brooklyn.
She tugs on the sleeve of his coat and asks, “Farshtayn Yiddish?”
The man answers, “Yes, Ich Farshtay.”
Elderly Lady: “Vot time is it?”
Is it usually this warm in the Catskills this time of year?
Aren’t you forgetting something? Haven’t we been a wonderful audience?
Have we ever been anything but a wonder fool audience?
Spin, true story?
It is my opinion that “mushroom hunter” is a bit over dramatic. Mushroom searcher-outter-and-gatherer I think it more appropriate. Otherwise next time I am in the mood for a snack I am going to consider myself a Twinkie hunter.
For what it’s worth, those mushrooms are probably called truffles and sell at $3000-4000 per pound. A good mushroom “hunter” with a good dog can gather $10k in a day easily. Thus, “dognappings”, shoot-outs and similar aggressive competitional behaviors are ordinary.
At least, they aren’t using hogs anymore. A mushroom hunter with a hog would be a ridiculous scene.
Is there a morel to the story? Either Black or White? No false morel to the story, or you will be ill.
Trifling with words: truffle not a morel, I don’t believe. But as I don’t really know, please don’t zap me!
Ooh, Dave can go in search of goat’s beard mushrooms!
Tosbaa… you are new here… and tho the last part of your comment made me laugh.. I am gonna tell you, rather warn you against giving out info that will stimulate learning in the others… I run a tight ship and you should soon find that out!!
That’s a big mushroom :O
I’m jealous, Spin. In my previous life, I met a few writers. But, I mainly got to meet literary scholars, i.e., literary critics.
Only one of them was I truly honored and humbled to meet. That was Cleanth Brooks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanth_Bro oks
When Brooks was elderly, we flew him in to deliver a talk on critical theory, especially the school of “The New Criticism,” which was then not “new.” I picked him up at the airport, and got to chat with him privately for about an hour. He was so charming, so intelligent, so much fun to chat with. We talked aobut everything from his books to dogs to William Faulkner, whom Brooks had met and chatted with once.
He had this little tiny overnight bag with wheels that felt like it was filled with styrofoam. But Brooks insisted that I not carry the “heavy” thing but wheel it through the airport.
My Department head took him back to the airport. He later asked me: “Did he make you wheel that little suitcase through the entire airport?”
Another scholar deliverd a paper on “Incest in the Canterbury Tales.” I spent the whoe talk wondering if it was possible to get drunk enough to buy his load of horse puckey. Afterwards, one of my colleagues said to me “I’ve been teaching The Canterbury Tales for 30 years. And I have no idea what he was talking about.”
RIP, Cleanth Brooks. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. You were a giant for me to stand on your shoulders.
Doc, Doc, Doc…. It seems to me in this thread you’re going out of your way to tempt Shra and her taser, and I’m not going to be able to help you.
That power blackout in Edinburgh today didn’t cover the entire city, you know.
Some things are worth getting tased for.
There has been no blackout here… but there will b now!!!
Zapp, u Doc!!!!
I am re-reading the Canterbury Tales at the moment, I haven’t noticed any incest. Should I be looking somewhere in particular ?
No, CG. Just enjoy. My favorites are The Pardoner’s Tale and the Miller’s Tale. I hope you’re reading them in Middle English!
The Miller’s Tale was my favorite, I think. Was that the one with the hot poker and the fart?
That’s The Miller’s Tale, Bob. I love the Miller’s Tale for it burlesque of courtly love. The Pardoner’s Tale I love for its dark, evil setting and characters. What a great horror movie it would make, with lots of sudden close-ups!
If you’re not reading the Tales in Middle English, CG, I can teach you all the dirty words….
Doc! You have sooooo had it now! I actually found the word “teach” in your comment!!
That’s it!!! I am placing you under room-arrest and your medication would be a zap an hour irrespective of whether you are “teaching” or NOT!!!
And Spin gets the monthly award for Best Movie Reference in a comment!
Enjoy your brand-new Cadillac El Dorado, spin! Oh wait, maybe that was last month’s prize.
Yeah, because contrary to what you may have heard, Spin, it isn’t an honor just to be nominated…
Skipping to The Pardoner’s Tale now…
Congratulations, Spin!!!
Say, you wanna have a party and make that soup again? You can then gimme the recipe!
CG, you owe me a recipe too… !!
Ohhh do you have any sushi to compliment the miso soup Spin???
No sushi, please!!! x_x
More for me then!
Doc, I feel your pain on the “shiitake”; it took me years to figure out “macabre”.
All those Friday lunches at Chinese restaurants. They thought I was trying to be funny, and they thought I was a funny guy…. ;p
Where have you been, Doc? A slow recovery from Shra’s taser?
The Wife of Bath doesn’t half witter on.
I think I liked the Wife of Bath. That, and The Miller’s Tale.
The benefit of going to a public school in Indiana – I mean public school in the U.S. sense – was that they gave us a handy list of tales that we were not allowed to read because they were crude and tasteless.
It made the selection process very simple for us.
I see the Canterbury Tale discussion is still on… I may just have to tase all of you… and then go and read this myself…
that is after I finish with Tolstoy…
Okay, Shra, but don’t expect me to gloss the dirty words in Middle English.
I hate to flaunt my literary background, Doc, but Middle English is words beginning with the letters J through P, right? Those are some of my favorites.
Objection. Question calls for an enlightening response.
Objection sustained. For I am feeling judgemental, so will act like one.