> I always puzzle about your (and my friend, Malion's)
> spelling "rooster", I know you wrote the tale in your
> website, but it is Roster, not Rooster. What lets you
> do so? Is it some kind of lunar incantation?
FYI, "rooster" is the American euphemism for "cock". James Branch Cabell has a lovely riff on this in chapter 16 of "Something About Eve" (1927)
-- 'But what,' asked Tenjo, 'is a rooster?' 'Why, a rooster is the herald of the dawn, it is the father of an omelet, it is the pullet's first bit of real luck, it is the male of the Gallus domesticus.' 'We do not call a male chicken that --' 'No,' Gerald assented, 'no, but you ought to. And not to do so is wholly un-American.' 'Yet why do you Americans call this particular bird a rooster, when everybody knows that all birds except ostriches and cassowaries roost, and that every flying bird everywhere is thus a rooster?' 'Well, I admit that we do not reason about it as you reason in Lytreia. I admit that the word "rooster" is a word without connotations and without any correspondence in anatomy. Nevertheless, every nation has its customs. And it is as much our well- established American custom to call the male of the chicken a rooster as it is your custom to call that thing a nose.' ["That thing" is the Holy Nose of Lytreia, which appears to Gerald, and the alert reader, to be a very different anatomical organ. More details on request. "Something About Eve" is one of the best HeroQuest novels ever written, BTW, as well as being absolutely *filthy* in places, as you'd expect from the author of "Jurgen"] Cheers, Nick
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