The Alpha-Bestiary
K is for Katrinka,
The katydid from Katmandu
Who quaffed a cup of mountain dew,
Downed a pound of Polska Kielbasa,
With a side of kohlrabi and kale
And spent the rest of her life in the loo.
K is for Katrinka,
The katydid from Katmandu
Who quaffed a cup of mountain dew,
Downed a pound of Polska Kielbasa,
With a side of kohlrabi and kale
And spent the rest of her life in the loo.
Katydids are a large group of insects in the order Orthoptera. The rasping noise made by a male Pterophylla camellifolia rubbing a rigid “scraper” on one forewing against a comb-like “file” on the other sounds like “Katy did! Katy didn’t! Katy did! Katy didn’t!” Kathmandu lies 1,400 m (4,600 ft) above sea level in the bowl-shaped "Nepal Mandala" valley in the Himalaya mountains. Its classical Nepalese name is Yei, and the indigenous Newar people call it Yeṃ Deśa; "Yem" is a short form of Yambu, which originally referred to the northern part of the city. The Pahari name Kathmandu is from the Kasthamandap temple,from the Sanskrit "kaṣṭha" (wood) and "maṇḍap" (covered shelter), a 3-story all-wood pavilion made from a single tree. (It was destroyed by an earthquake in 2015.) In medieval times it was sometimes called Kāntipur ("beauty," especially as associated with light, and "place"). The "Shiva Purana" referred to the city as Nayapala (probably the source of "Nepal"). Originally it was the site of Nagdaha, a snake-filled lake, but Bodhisatwa Manjusri cut it with his sword and drained it before founding Manjupattan. A demon named Banasur closed the outlet and turned the valley into a lake again, but Krishna killed the demon and drained the area again.
ReplyDeletePolska kielbasa is Polish sausage. It comes in dozens of varieties, smoked or fresh, made with pork, beef, turkey, lamb, chicken, or veal. The name may have derived from the Hebrew "kol basar" (all kinds of meat) or the Turkic "kül basa" (ash-pressed). Kohlrabi ("kohl" is German for cabbage; "rabi" is Swiss-German for turnip) and kale belong to the Brassica oleracea species.
"Loo" (toilet) may be a corruption of French "l'eau" (water) or "lieu" (place); "lieu d'aisance" (place of ease) is a euphemism for a toilet) and "lieu à l'anglaise" (English place) was an 18th-century term for English-style toilets installed for travelers. Ultimately it may have been a reference to the 17th-century Jesuit preacher Louis Bourdaloue, whose sermons were so long his parishioners took their chamber pots with them to church.
gare à l'eau ("mind the water", used in reference to emptying chamber pots into the street from an upper-story window), lieu ("place"), or .[53][56][57] Other proposed etymologies include a supposed tendency to place toilets in room 100 (hence "loo") in English hotels,[58] a dialectical corruption of the nautical term "lee" in reference to the need to urinate and defecate with the wind prior to the advent of head pumps,[n 3] or the 17th-century preacher Louis Bourdaloue, whose long sermons at Paris's Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis prompted his parishioners to bring along chamber pots.[59]
is a kind of wild cabbage;