Unless you are reading the GWEnglish blog via Facebook, Google Reader, or some other RSS feed compiler, you will notice that to your right we have introduced our very first poll. The question we are asking is nearly cosmic in its importance: should the English Department adopt a new mascot, or is the noncolorful Hippo statue you see on our blog and Facebook page to be retained?
ARGUMENTS FOR MASCOT MURDER AND REPLACEMENT: The hippo bears an uncanny resemblance to a former president of this university who is not remembered for his love of books. The hippo is not a literary creature. No great poem has ever been composed about hippopotami. William Shakespeare was indifferent to hippos. This African creature kills more humans per year than lions do. In these lean economic times the hippo is no longer an appropriate symbol. Because of their bulk hippos may be susceptible to diabetes and heart disease. English majors prefer gloomier, more ponderous fauna. The English Department requires a symbol consonant with its dignity: a quill for example radiates a certain gravitas. The English Department needs to stop pretending that it possesses dignity and gravitas: how about a Jabberwock or frumious Bandersnatch? A raven might fit the dour times and suggests Poe, who died about thirty miles north of here.
ARGUMENT AGAINST: The Hippo might be sad.
Please VOTE and let us know.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
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17 comments:
Shakespeare indifferent to hippos? Are you forgetting about his character Hippo-lyta in Midsummer Night's Dream? Her character was played by one of the more robust members of Shakespeare's company.
I stand corrected, Liza!!
Here here! The hippo must go! There are already enough plaques around campus with Tractenberg's name on them anyway. Have you ever tried to count them?
But what to replace it with? Hmm. Maybe we need a whole new post-colonial mascot, like Felix the Jell-o clown?
The English Department and Blog require a brave new mascot for staying relevant in this brave new world.
I'd vote for a certain fez-wearer, but I think the blog needs something definitively English related. The hippo is too free-ranging a mascot to be corralled by the English Dept.
I'm pretty sure hippos eat mass amounts of candy. I do too. I'm all for the hippo!
I'll be the mascot, if it's a tenure track position.
Aww, I'm fond of the hippo, as we may be the only two entities on campus with similar measurements.
If a replacement must be found, might I recommend the title character of Americo Paredes' novel George Washington Gomez?
The Hippo is beautiful. So beautiful. Keep it. The hippo may have come to GW with SJT, but it's significance transcends our late president. If you are trying to kill what little school spirit exists at this school. Hang the Hippo.
Although Milton writes that "Hippopotamus detrahendi sanguinis ostendit," must we kill the fat beast? I say send it back to its mudhole and hire his inspirational relative, the hippo-gryph, who literary heritage extends from Orlando Furioso to Harry Potter.
Soft-hearted Anonymous ignores the utterly disgusting nature of the Sea-Horse, which Topsell, in his authoritative 1658 History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents and Insects, rightly calls "a most ugly and filthy beast." Moreover, sirrah, in On the Characteristics of Animals the erudite Aelian observes that the hippo eats its own father! Should not such an abomination be terminated? Let the reader decide based on the facts.
That the hippo is the catalyst to some seriously profound ruminations is evidenced by the comments to this thread.
However, I do advocate its slaughter nonetheless.
Overcome by lust to kill the Equus Niloticum, Anon ignores inconvenient truths evident to all readers of Pliny. First, the beast cannot be killed because it does not exist! Pliny's description reveals it to be as mythical as the hippogryph: "he hath a cloven hoof like a bouefe: the backe, main, and haire of an horse...his tail twineth like the bores." Second, it is difficult to kill because ti can act as its own physician! When wounded,it "stoppeth the orifice with mud, and so stauncheth the bloud, and healeth up the wound." You are refuted, sirrah.
Outrageous to favor Pliny over the authority of Job! Bochart's Hierozoicon, sive de Animalibus Scripturae (London, 1663) definitively identified the "behemot" of chapter 40 as the hippopotamus. Would you be bedfellow to the embodiment of chaos, whom its Maker threatens with a sword and against whom Horus stands in perpetual vigilance?
Scandalous! The devil may quote scriptures! Take the Gideon text from the nightstand next to where you must be conducting your subversive business, and read the word of the Lord! "Behold now Behemoth, which I have with thee; he eateth grass as an ox." Eat his father indeed! "Only he that made him can make his sword to approach unto him." Sirrah, would you so presume the prerogative of He who speaks from the whirlwind?
Why do I get the feeling that all the Anon.s are Jeffrey's conflicted psyche. You CAN'T take away the hippo. But I will consent to photoshopping in a quill somewhere. Or maybe a "Nevermore!" speech bubble?
Liza, I would swear those comments came from YOU -- I am not smart enough to generate them.
And according to the poll, it looks like the Hippo will be spared slaughter.
Behold the hippopotamus!
We laugh at how he looks to us,
And yet in moments dank and grim,
I wonder how we look to him.
Peace, peace, thou hippopotamus!
We really look all right to us,
As you no doubt delight the eye
Of other hippopotami.
-- Ogden Nash
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