OT: Jonathan Swift was Re: [Sca-cooks] To Cook a 'Coon

[Susan Fox-Davis]

Stefan li Rous wrote:

> Margaret said:
> > Stefan has been reading Jonathan Swift again, methinks. ;-)
>
> Uh, no. Never heard of him, except perhaps on this list.

I weep for the state of modern education.  18th Century author, best known
for GULLIVER'S TRAVELS.  "A Modest Proposal" has already been explained.
Anthropophagal humor, and I'm proud of our listmates for pointedly avoiding
any politically incorrect implications of the abbreviation "coon".

Why I thought Yahoo was funny:

In the fourth part of GULLIVER'S TRAVELS, "A Voyage to the Houyhnhnyms,"
Lemuel Gulliver is washed ashore in a land where intelligent, philosophical
Horses rule the land, served by repulsive, bestial, dumb animals called
Yahoos.  Yup, humans.  So:  who's the Yahoo now?

You would do well to read this 18th Century social satire, which holds up
well even after near 300 years.
<http://www.jaffebros.com/lee/gulliver/>

More on Swift's punplay and multilingual-multilevel jokes:
<http://www.geocities.com/richston2/>

Food content:  Swift's anti-war commentary is evident in an earlier chapter,
where a major war is held between people who eat the big end of their boiled
egg first and those who prefer the little end.  His point being, that most
wars are fought over matters as trivial as this.

Selene