Hrodulf the Red-Nosed Reindeer: An Original Old English Poem

Hwæt, Hrodulf readnosa hrandeor–
Næfde þæt nieten unsciende næsðyrlas!
Glitenode and gladode godlice nosgrisele.
. . . .

This came to me by mail some weeks ago, with the funny letters mangled beyond my ability to decipher. Here it is in all its glory.

As I listen to Rhino’s Super Hits of the Seventies: Have a Nice Day vol.9, divers questions come to mind.

• When Gary Glitter recorded “Rock and Roll Part 2” did it cross the mind of anyone concerned that I might be air-drumming to it thirty years later?
• Is Rick Springfield’s “Speak to the Sky” the only pop hit with a prominent tuba part?
• Why haven’t I heard “Popcorn” used in advertising?

“To his Koi Mistress” by Troy McClure.

Okay, not really, because there’s no way I could do justice to the premise.

There is no reason why he should not . . . take her waltzing in Strauss’ Vienna or to the theater in Shakespeare’s London – as well as exploring funny little bars in Tom Lehrer’s New York or playing tag in the sun and surf of Hawaii a thousand years before the canoe men arrived.

Brave to Be a King, a time-travel story by Poul Anderson. I wonder, would he have said “Tom Lehrer’s New York” in any year other than 1959?

I don’t know who jaguaro.org might be, or on what authority they decree One Hundred Albums You Should Remove from Your Collection Immediately [new link], but what the hell. I went through the list and found five that I own (you can have my Surrealistic Pillow when . . you know), one that I culled years ago (Physical Graffiti), and about 25 whose perpetrators’ names I do not recognize. What that says about me is left as an exercise.

The List of Possible Bandnames, for those who have musical talent or a knack for names, but not both.

I wonder whether it’s possible to write decent music with a fractional number of beats to a measure; by which I mean not that each measure should end with a fractional beat, but rather — imagine that a lunar month (29 days and a fraction) is a ‘measure’ and each Sunday is a ‘beat’; the first Sunday after a new moon is the first beat of a measure, so some measures have four beats and some have five.

In particular, what about a rhythm built on the golden ratio? It should sound like a syncopated 2-beat, or rather a 3-beat, or rather a 5-beat . . . for every Fibonacci number. You couldn’t dance to it; it would be a challenge even to hum along. But I have the perfect title for such a composition.