Jellied Eels

by John Holbo on May 17, 2006

And then the bard says: “I warrant you, mistress, thunder shall not so awake the beds of eels as my giving out her beauty stir up the lewdly-inclined. I’ll bring home some to-night.” And then the bawd says: “Come your ways, follow me.”

I think it means that I just realized this really great Eels track, “Jelly Dancers”, is available free here (mp3). It’s off Dimension Mix [amazon], which boasts some seriously ok earworms.

For example, here’s the Beck track. Someone did it up as a Monty Python video and everything.

{ 10 comments }

1

Yentz Mahogany 05.17.06 at 2:20 pm

Ah, Eels… Will you ever stop being so weird?

2

Tim 05.17.06 at 3:00 pm

Jelly Dancers is ok, but kinda repetitive, no?

3

Barry 05.17.06 at 9:39 pm

Perhaps I’m showing myself to be particularly clueless, but the first paragraph of this post sounded like some text composed to fool a spam filter – words strung together which almost have meaning. What’s with that?

4

'As you know' Bob 05.17.06 at 10:15 pm

… I found to my horror that a young man of whom I knew nothing was arranging to marry my daughter. I sent for him immediately, and found him to be quite impossible. He jellies eels!’

‘Does what?’

‘He is an assistant at a jellied eel shop.’

‘But surely,’ said Lord Ickenham, ‘that speaks well for him. The capacity to jelly an eel seems to me to argue intelligence of a high order. It isn’t everybody who can do it, by any means. I know if someone came to me and said ‘Jelly this eel!’ I should be nonplussed. And so, or I am very much mistaken, would Ramsay MacDonald and Winston Churchill.’
. . .
‘I’ve told you a hundred times, mother, that Wilberforce is only jellying eels till he finds something better.’

‘What is better than an eel?’ asked Lord Ickenham, who had been following this discussion with the close attention it deserved. ‘For jellying purposes, I mean.’

[Wodehouse, What Ho!]

5

Yentz Mahogany 05.17.06 at 11:12 pm

“The passion for philosophy, like that for religion, seems liable to this inconvienience, that, though it aims at the correction of our manners, and extirpation of our vices, it may only serve, by imprudent management, to foster a predominant inclination, and push the mind, with more determined resolution, towards that side which already draws too much, by the bias and propensity to jelly eels.” — David Hume, Enquiry Section 5

Well I’ll be..

6

John Holbo 05.18.06 at 12:57 am

Barry, the eel quote is real. It’s from Shakespeare’s “Pericles”. Yentz’ David Hume quote, on the other hand …

Bob’s Wodehouse is great. Obviously it’s real.

7

agm 05.18.06 at 2:16 am

And then the bawd says: “Come your ways, follow me.”
Typo or drawl? Only the Shadow knows…

8

John Holbo 05.18.06 at 2:36 am

No, she’s a bawd awright.

9

Barry 05.18.06 at 7:32 am

Thanks, John.

10

Belle Waring 05.19.06 at 6:40 am

dammit, as you know bob! I just reread that story the other day, and was prepared to pounce on this comments thread like some…pouncing animal. let’s say, a puma. but it’s too late!!!

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