Word: spit
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Caprifole is a lovely word. If anything it is a shade too lovely, something to be tasted, rolled over the tongue, chewed lightly, savored and then, perhaps, not swallowed but spit discreetly into a tub of clean shavings. But what does it mean? The first dictionary to come to hand, an old Webster's, does not list caprifole at all. The unabridged Random House mentions only "caprifoliaceous: belonging to the Caprifoliaceae, a family of plants including the honeysuckle, elder, viburnum, snowberry...
...small, dark, knobby and wrinkled delicacy known as the truffle has tantalized palates and minds for thousands of years. The ancient Greek Theophrastus believed truffles were a product of thunder. In the Middle Ages they were considered evil things grown from the spit of witches. Later they came to be prized as an aphrodisiac, and Madame de Pompadour fed them to Louis XV. Napoleon, who was having difficulty fathering children, begat his only legitimate son after eating a truffled turkey. He promoted a lieutenant to colonel for having given him the recipe. In 1825, Brillat-Savarin, the savant of haute...
What about, for example, the aphasics of the counterculture? The ad writer may dingdong catch phrases like Pavlov's bells in order to produce saliva. The Movement propagandist rings his chimes ("Fascist!" "Pig!" "Honky!" "Male chauvinist!") to produce spit. More stammer than grammar, as Dwight Macdonald put it, the counterculture makes inarticulateness an ideal, debasing words into clenched fists ("Right on!") and exclamation points ("Oh, wow!"). Semantic aphasia on the right, semantic aphasia on the left. Between the excesses of square and hip rhetoric the language is in the way of being torn apart...
There are several fine moments: a peasant father rubbing spit in his eye and kissing his crucifix when he suspects Sharif of Satanic evil, or a ritual killing of the hothead who breaks away from Caine and attempts to destroy the village. He charges at the Captain, brandishing a battleaxe; his target calmly raises a pistol, and fires at his groin. A child strikes the felled warrior two glancing blows with a mace; the villagers look on. The rebel dies in agony...
...layout and design format was introduced to bring readers some pleasure and to attract writers to submit their work and publish in the next issue, in April. Can you really, in good conscience, turn down this offer? You shit on the Advocate now, soon you'll want to spit on a Candy Striper. And for what? -last night I saw Fred walking stiff-legged down Bow Street toward Dunster House. He said that he had fallen on the ice and bruised his buttocks on a parking meter. He was wearing his slide rule strapped to his belt as usual...