The Lexicographer's Rules, the weblog of Grant Barrett

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Monday, June 30, 2003

“He had had an Irish gang draining for him, by contract. He thought a negro could do twice as much work in a day as an Irishman. He had not stood over them and seen them at work, but judged entirely from the amount they accomplished: he thought a good gang of negroes would have got on twice as fast. He was sure they must have ‘trifled’ a great deal, or they would have accmplished more than they had. He complained much, also, of their sprees and quarrels. I asked why he should employ Irishmen, in preference to doing the work with his own hands. ‘It’s dangerous work [unhealthy?], and a negro’s life is too valuable to be risked at it. If a negro dies, it’s a considerable loss, you know.” (Source Link)

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Saturday, June 28, 2003

“By the early hours of May 29 the mobs were tired out, and an unidentified riot leader was heard to say, “Come on, fellows, let’s go home. Tomorrow night we’ll be ready for them. We are not armed now, but tomorrow we’ll all have guns. We’ll burn the negroes out and run them out of town.” However, some of the whites proceeded to the railroad depot to meet an Illinois Central train supposedly arriving with five hundred migrants. When the rioters realized the report was false they finally went home. Shortly after two o’clock in the morning, hundreds of Negroes carrying battered suitcases were seen heading for the bridges that led to St. Louis, and, although many whites were still on the streets at that hour, the refugees were not molested. During the long night, damage to life and property had actually been comparatively light. Two or three Negroes were shot, some were severely beaten, but no one was killed.” (Source Link)

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Friday, June 27, 2003

“I confess I have not kept my senses in proper custody. I place no restraint whatever upon sight, hearing, taste smell, touch, except in so far as my naural sympathies or antipathies direct me. I cultivate them and refine them and sharpen them: but never mortify them. I hardly ever practise self-denial. Even when I do, I catch myself extracting elements of aesthetic enjoyment from it. For example, I was present at the amputation of a leg. Under anaesthetics, directly the saw touched the marrow, of the thigh bone, the other leg began to kick. I was next to it; and the surgeon told me to hold it still. It was ghastly: but I did. And then I actually caught myself admiring the exquisite silky texture of human skin…” (Source Link)

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Thursday, June 26, 2003

Water M

“Snakes and eels slithered for the water, fish flapped across the mudbank like acrobats. But for every potential escapee there was a quick scrawny Mandingo boy with a club. Thud-thud went the clubs, and a new song began, less insistent in its beat, slower-paced, methodical: a killing song. Not a fish escaped. Already the drying fires were roaring as women strung the little silver fish on lines and hung them out to toast. There was a perch in the catch that must have weighed over a hundred pounds, and a catfish-looking thing that could have swallowed it whole. Two men help up a terrapin the size of a wagon wheel, another dragged a twelve-foot python up the bank and headed in the direction of the village. Within minutes the terrapin was shelled, dismembered and bubbling away in the pot; the perch and catfish were gutted, wrapped in leaves and tossed into a smoldering pit while a pair of marabou storks fought over the remains. Jemafoo tapped the explorer’s shoulder. “Here,” he said, offering one of the three-inch fish that flashed and writhed in his hand. “Akeena” He was grinning encouragement, having learned from experience that all distress is food-related. “Watch--like this,” he demonstrated, putting his lips to the fish’s vent and squeezing it lengthwise to draw out the roe. “Go ahead, try it.” (Source Link)

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Wednesday, June 25, 2003

“An old-time jazz band had started playing, greeted with much applause. Harry Stone performed a brief hairy-legged cakewalk, his eyes sad and grim. Nigger could be heard barking in the distance, presumably locked up in some lavatory. The trousers, Edwin found, were too short: a lot of sock was visible. Still, they would have to do. The jazz band, having given each instrument a virtuoso chorus, now crashed into its shipwreck climax with every man for himself. Teenage screams laced with applause. Harry Stone went back to his twin, and Edwin watched from the wings the turn that followed. A sloppy young man was greeted with ecstasy. He sang of teenage love, how that and that alone was the real thing, and how life ended at twenty. He treated the microphone as a very thin teenage girl and, after bestowing various caresses upon it, he threw it to the floor and lay on the long rod of the stand, kiss-singing into the mouthpiecewhile his body made perceptible rutting movements. The girls’ screams became orgiastic, orgasmatic. An austere age, thought Edwin, an age of economy. The opulence of Tristan had once been required to produce a like effect in an older generation, though a tactile effect only.” (Source Link)

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This is the personal weblog of Grant Barrett, editor of the Double-Tongued Dictionary, a collection of words from the fringes of English. More about this site...

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