Wednesday, December 02, 2020

1. The Wabbit and the Meaning of Words.

The Wabbit walked along the porticos musing on anything he could muse on. He'd never given the Caffè sign a second glance. He merely knew it to be a place that sold extremely fine coffee. But today he looked up at it and thought for a minute. An acquaintance had given him to believe that the sign had an offensive word and he just couldn't understand why. Apart from the successful Italian rock band, he only knew it as a descriptive term of endearment in Spanish - and he'd argued with the acquaintance that The little black girl Caffè just didn't fit the bill. The friend had disagreed and had stalked off in high dudgeon, leaving the Wabbit bemused. The Wabbit shook his head. After all, he was a brown rabbit and proud; and he thought, "This is something I must take up with Skratch the Cat." So he bowled down the road, wondering about words. "What if words could take up arms against their oppressors and fight for their rights? What if they disagreed? The streets would be wash with warring factions all claiming authenticity. And typefaces too!" Such were his thoughts. He imagined it for a bit, seeing words in various fonts and sizes clashing at dawn. Capitals would wage war on lower case. Italics against Roman against Kanji. Upright might pit themselves against oblique. In the Wabbit's mind, vast armies drew up in opposition. Hiragana and Katakana waved banners at each other as if in a film by Akira Kurosawa. Written on their banners were the same words with different meanings. It was all quite overwhelming. The Wabbit spotted Skratch loping further down the porticos and he chased after him shouting in Ariel Bold ...