It’s funny how words change in meaning. A 1990 fashion headline tells us, Givenchy and Valentino Revel in Luxury. Now, the 2007 photo caption below informs us, Revellers wrestle in chocolate…

I started noticing a couple of months ago that every news photo caption we had from the running of the bulls in Pamplona contained the word revellers, even when folks were about to revel under a bull’s hoofprint stamped on their faces.

I did a caption search and found 200 shots of revellers from the past 90 days, mostly of people wallowing in mud, beer, foam, wine, sweat and worse. I don’t know, but it seems to me revelry was more fun back when you didn’t have to be hosed off afterwards.

Revellers wrestle in chocolate during the one-week, round-the-clock Sziget (’Island’) Music Festival on an island in the Danube river, in Budapest August 13, 2007. REUTERS/Laszlo Balogh

Hey, Blog Guy, I hear there’s a town someplace where everybody looks like the author Ernest Hemingway. What would that be like? It sounds very Kafkaesque!

Well, no, it would be Kafkaesque if they looked like Franz Kafka, but I know what you mean. You’re talking about a place in Florida where they all look like actress Mariel Hemingway’s grandfather for a few days a year. I believe plastic surgery is involved.

Boy, you really know a lot. Is that where Hemingway wrote his classic book about a retired man who goes back to college but only gets very average grades?

Yes, that would be “The Old Man and the C.” 

More Oddly Enough Blog

Ernest Hemingway lookalikes conclude the annual “Running of the Bulls,” outside Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Key West, Florida, July 21, 2007. A facet of the island’s annual Hemingway Days festival, Key West’s whimsical version of the bull run is much shorter and far safer than its counterpart in Pamplona, Spain. REUTERS/Andy Newman/Florida Keys News Bureau/Handout

Dear Mommy,
It’s great visiting Daddy! I’m having the most fun any 10-year-old boy could have! We got ice cream, we saw the new Harry Potter movie, we ran with the bulls in Pamplona, we…

Excuse me? Yeah, it turns out this mother in Spain was less than thrilled to pick up a newspaper and see a photo of her ex-husband leading their son by the  arm just a few feet in front of the bulls, in that annual festival where guys do things they would never think of doing sober.

A judge has since revoked visitation rights, and the father may have to wait’ll the cows come home to see his son again. 

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A runner is chased by a bull during the fifth day of the running of the bulls at the San Fermin festival in Pamplona July 11, 2007. REUTERS/Joseba Etxaburu

“Well, Mr. Know-It-All, this is a fine mess. You said, let’s run down this alley, and they’ll go for that dude standing in the doorway! How does that seem to be workin’ for us so far?

“And you were the smarty-pants who said we could yell anything we wanted in English, because bulls only know Spanish! I guess maybe they have a damned foreign phrase book, ya think?

“While we’re at it, you said we’d be safe if we got really, really drunk, because bulls fear the smell of red wine! Don’t you ever get tired of being wrong, Floyd? And another thing…”

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Runners and fighting bulls from the Jose Cebala Gago ranch enter the bullring during the fourth day of the San Fermin festival in Pamplona July 10, 2007. REUTERS/Vincent West

Who could have guessed that the next big trend would be nun-matador bars? But here they are, wildly successful - at least, you know,  in cities that have both nuns and matadors.  Of course, you may have different ideas about what’s going on in this photo. Try your hand at a clever caption, and send it our way via Post a Comment. 

You come here often? Nuns talk to Spanish assistant bullfighters before the start of a bullfight at Pamplona’s bullring on the last day of the San Fermin festival July 14, 2006. REUTERS/Susana Vera 

An unsuspecting tourist smiles, unaware that hooligans have just dropped a large black beanbag onto his head.  Still, that’s nothing compared with the surprise he’s about to get, when that big wooden gate opens.  Let’s all watch what happens…. 

Or, maybe something else altogether different is happening in this newsphoto. Drop us your best captions via Post a Comment. 

Bullfighter Manuel Jesus ‘El Cid’ waits for the start of a bullfight at Pamplona’s bullring during San Fermin festival July 12, 2006. REUTERS/Eloy Alonso

It turns out live sex shows of bulls mounting a simulated cow have become a big attraction at an agricultural exhibition in New Zealand. The fake ‘cow’ — a small go-kart with natural cowhide on its roof — was developed to collect semen from bulls. .

But here’s the thing. The go-kart is driven by a human operator, and that just doesn’t sound like such a great job, especially when you have to print up business cards that say “Semen-collecting fake cow driver.” And then there are those awkward moments at dinner parties, when the person next to you asks, “So, what do you do?” 

A lot of bull… A fighting bull crashes against a barrier during the seventh running of the bulls at San Fermin festival in Pamplona July 13, 2004. REUTERS/Pablo Sanchez