Cabbages And Kings

A

• A Brief Biography Of Slapping in Cabbages and Kings: Few words have the immediacy of this one. In its first known usage in English, it’s nearly 400 years old, going back to the mid-1630s. Its roots are probably from the very similar Germanic, schlappe, and both are onomatopoeic, suggestive of the sound they make. » more
  
  
• A Little Bit Of Tintin In Our Lives in Cabbages and Kings: It is hard to imagine our childhoods without him. We lost ourselves in his world. We laughed at the crazy things his friends did, but his struggles and ultimate triumphs were always our own. » more
  
  
• An Unsuitable Boy: Shashi Tharoor, India and the UN Secretary-Generalship in Cabbages and Kings: The only time BBC’s congenitally obnoxious Tim Sebastian was thoroughly non-plussed was when he interviewed the redoubtable Nina Simone. While NDTV’s Barkha Dutt is no Sebastian, and Shashi Tharoor no Simone, she, too, seemed competely mesmerized by her subject. » more
  
  

C

• Clueless in Kochi in Cabbages and Kings: As the volcanic ash-eclipsing dust finally settles on the Modi-Tharoor brouhaha, perhaps it is time for a reassessment of what was won and what was lost. Clearly, this was the theatre of the absurd, and India and its media nearly reduced to a laughing stock: a somewhat sleazy sports czar took a potshot at an international bureaucrat-turned-politician, they sniped at each other on a micro-blogging site, and instead of seeing the fracas for what it was — a childish ruffling of each other’s hairdos — all other news was swamped out. » more
  
  

G

• Guess What, You’ve Been Snarked in Cabbages and Kings: There’s a word for it, this feeling of wanting to say something biting and nasty when you catch the day’s news, triggered by a constant sense of absurdity overwhelming logic, of contradictions without consistency, of shifting sands. The word is snark, and it has two origins, one perhaps from Low German or Swedish, meaning a snide remark, and the other from Lewis Carroll. » more