(no subject)

From Abednego I naturally moved to being fascinated with Shadrach because Tamara and I were discussing both of them in nineteenth century American popular culture (and penny arcades - don't ask). Abednego is better, I think. Shadrach sounds like a good swear word, however, especially if you use a nice gutteral for the 'ch'.

Using perfectly innocent words to insult people with is a sad legacy of my childhood. My sisters and I combed the Hebrew dictionary for something to fling in foul return at the Greek and Italian words that were being catapulted in our direction. We chose 'melafafon', with 'melafafonim' being the very handy plural. Try saying that with an evil gutteral accent and much foul intent.

At one stage I was hauled before a teacher for swearing.

"I was just calling her a cucumber, Miss," was my answer.