I'm reading a book that's not that great really about death. Hmmm. Interesting you say. Well, like I said, it's not that great. However! She has one of the best footnotes I've seen in while about a book she read on Talmudic medicine:
"Here were detailed rabbinical opinions upon 'whether or not a cattle breeder whose animal caused damage by knocking something with its penis must make restitution"; upon the inadmissibility of cleansing the anus 'with the snout of a dog'; upon 'the misconduct in which a woman places into the vagina of another woman a piece of meat from a fallen animal'...and treatments for chronic uterine bleeding ('take three measures of Persian onions. boil them with wine, make her drink it and say to her, "Cease your discharge!")
Three things come to mind:
1) What manner of ...?
2) "Cease your discharge!" is like my most favorite thing to say right now.
3) I need to, have to, must must must read this book.
"Cease your discharge!" induces the same involuntary shudder as "moist." Of course I'm imagining myself as the recipient of such a command rather than the spittle-spraying almighty healer.
Posted by: Amanda S at January 3, 2007 03:55 PMi received this book for my last birthday. i particularly enjoyed the chapter on mediums and what they produced from where.
('shut your piehole' was also effective, but very hard to say in yiddish.)
Posted by: raej at January 4, 2007 09:59 AMNothing leaves a permanent stain on your record worse than a dishonorable discharge.
Posted by: flamingbanjo at January 4, 2007 04:13 PMBanjos are so witty!
Posted by: Amanda S. at January 5, 2007 04:30 PMRaej- Yes, apparently it is possible to keep an entire menagerie in your euphemism.
Amanda- I think the idea of a tiny elderly man with a filthy beard pointing a gnarled finger at me and shouting the phrase spraying bits of unleavened bread and tartar on my skirt is what made me so very delighted.
"Cease your discharge!"
"Cease YOUR discharge, sir!"
Posted by: JtotheP at January 11, 2007 09:26 PM