by Anna Tambour
The grains Halbutt smuggled out of Turkey had to be dumped at sea as carriers of smut. It is thought that they were a type of long-grain "gooseneck" amaranth once cultivated in the province of Siirt.
TACCHIA, NUNO - see Fruits, preserved; Cornlake, Iowa
Nuno Tacchia (1920-1958) is the inventor of the tacchia net, a skimming seine used to capture fruits and vegetables at sea. A former fisherman, he realised the potential one day after flash-floods on the Portuguese coast, when he couldn't sink his herring nets under the floating mass of citrus fruits, olives, tomatoes, pumpkins and zucchini. His son Fernando changed the name of the company, Tacchia Nets, to Tacchia International in 2002 when he significantly expanded the company, bringing into use his father's other invention, the bottom trawler (1957), designed to salvage sunken fruit. There was at that time, no market for salt-laden produce. Fernando has been so successful with his exports to China that he is now growing and sinking liquorice roots to flavour Tacchia Mixed Fruits further to the Chinese taste. The changing patterns of rainfall have only benefited the company. Grapes, cherries, and stone fruits constituted the company's main exports in 2015, as fishing grounds at that time covered the Danube, Rhine and Po regions.
TELLIOPE
A coin-operated toy sold by the Tell Bros Express Toy Emporium. The toy was a monkey amusingly grinding its own organ. Sales were by mail order, and promoted by advertising sheets stitched into the October and November 1865 (the last two monthly episodes) of Dickens' Our Mutual Friend. The Telliope Instructional Organ Grinder was a sell-out success for the Tell Bros 1865 Christmas season. "Teach your child thrift with this pennysaving gift" the advertisement read, "and you'll never have to Tell them a thing!" If the child put a coin in the monkey's opened hand, the hand dropped to an organ-grinder's wheel, where the coin disappeared. There was the sound of the coin dropping, and then the monkey turned the wheel and the "organ" played a little tune. The actual music came from a music box cleverly located inside the metal monkey, because the organ was the coinbox. The advertisement showed a greatly muscled man with hair down to his waist, wielding a giant hammer at a strongbox. "You can't teach Uncle Edworth to restrain from indulging your tots, but with the Telliope, you can be sure that every penny they get, they spend, and once they pay to hear the Telliope, their money is kept Safe from the mightiest Sampson!" The coinbox's "organ" was so thickly walled and heavily secured with welded seams that the angriest boy could not bash it open. There is no record of the toy being sold in 1866, possibly because there was no opening to the little money bank, save the slot that the coins dropped into.
This toy would have been as forgotten as the Tell Me No Lies Electric Belt and the Future ForTeller Machine, and even that other forgotten but once popular Tell Toy, the Picture Worth a Thousand Tastes Book of Nursery Meals, but for the three famous people who were educated by the Telliope Instructional Organ Grinder. J. B. Livesay, creator of the most popular American travelling act of the 1880s, Livesay and D'Yousay, credited his skill as a ventriloquist to the dedication he put into retrieving coins from his Telliope by the action of his tongue through the coinslot of his Telliope, while having to, "in my dark, cold nursery, say my prayers and my goodnight wishes loud enough that my dear mother could hear them on the other side of the door." His act always ended with someone in the audience asking "Why'd you talk to the Almighty and yur Ma when you got yur mouth open?" at which point, he'd turn his head and say, "Ask D'Yousay." And for once in the act, the wooden boy on his lap had nothing to say. D'Yousay only shrugged.
Brisco "The Beast" Shugars was also famous in the 1880s, but not for performances anyone willingly attended until the day he was put in an electric chair, for which event the State of Louisiana sold lottery tickets. The Beast's daring daylight robberies left a trail of blood, which was his literal trademark. He'd walk into a bank on a rainy day, and suddenly shed his overcoat. Underneath, his clothes would be as bloody, as Jim Jessup, the Chicago Sun's crack crime reporter wrote, "as if he'd just butchered the twenty wives of Mormon John Smith, and all his children. The Beast then doffs his hat, see, and from his hair, blood Niagaras down his face. 'Yur life or the bank's money,' he snarls like the Beast he is, and tellers, bank managers, whoever's on the other side of that visage with the Face of Hell just up and hands him bags of money fast as hail falls on a ripe peaches on the bough, in Damnationland. May his soul rot for all the innocents he's sent to early graves."
Shugars was captured one overcast morning when he choked on one of the free potatoes with butter that patrons got when they ordered a beer at William McGillin's Philadelphia taproom, The Bell in Hand. William's wife Catherine (fated to be known in the Philadelphia Enquirer, and then everywhere, as "the Amazon") picked up the writhing customer from the saw-dust laden floor, "and ripping open his heavy overcoat, exposed the bloody mess that covered his evil, hairy, barely clothed hide." Only after Shugars was electrocuted was it discovered that the people who claimed to have seen him murder and burn bodies in four states were all perjurers, and that the blood that he used for his robberies was, in the spring, pig's blood for making blood pudding that he'd buy at local butcher shops. When pig killing season was over, he'd mix cornflour, water, and cochineal, the same dye (made from beetle cases) used then by confectioners to make "cherry" syrup. During the trial he "cried like a baby", said he was "plumb sorry", and claimed, "I never hurt a fly. I don't even touch ham." He interrupted the cross-examination many times with a strange, garbled cry, reported by Jessup as "The inhuman, animal cry of the Beast," but what was, after his death and the unpacking of his few, spare belongings and a heart-wrenching diary, interpreted as (Hewson, Larnik P. and Oliphant, Roy, "Hearing or Hearsay: Nouns or Nonsense? Effectual Retardant Structures as Stratifying M-h Inhibitors", Journal of Linguistic Jurisprudence, Vol. 12 [3] July-Aug, 1956, Belvedere University, Schenectady, New York) "Blame the monkey grinder monstrance."
Still, by 1917, the Telliope Instructional Organ Grinder would have been well and truly forgot, if not for Margaretha Geertruida "Grietje" Zelle, who called herself Mata Hari. Henry Sales, the British reporter who covered her last days, claimed to have been told by her that when "in 1991 when this seductrice-to-be was 15, she was sent to live with her uncle Visser at Sneek, the Netherlands, where her uncle gave her the mysterious toy that, with a wicked grin, she referred to as 'ze monkey met ze zlotted box.' " The mechanism that made a tune must have long since ceased to function, but the box clinked with mysterious treasure. "Ziss little toy! It teached me to make later, Villyam, ze Crown Prince ov Djermany, a very happy poy," Sales wrote in a small illustrated "autobiography" that he had printed at Grub Street, London, at his own expense for private subscription.
T'JAIME
A unisex brand of perfumes and depilatories.
TSEVERENKO PHENOMENON
An occurrence named by and after Yuri Tseverenko (1945—), a physics professor at the University of Chicago. The phenomenon refers to his posit that colour is a conditioned response. His bestseller Green? set off a storm of interest in the treatment of colour in extraterrestrial photos, thus on our own planet. The existence of the Tseverenko Phenomenon has been hotly disputed by sceptics, but they cannot disprove it.
UANORRA - see Folk remedies
Common name given to the bushy-tailed marsupial rat (Dasyuroides tiffanyei) discovered in Tasmania in 2008 by F. Wylie Chapman of the University of Washington's Medical School. Compared to the more heavily studied crest-tailed rat (Dasyuroides byrnei), whose mucous cells have come under scrutinisation by scientists from the Institute of Laboratory Animal Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Kagoshima University, the uanorra is of interest for many reasons, as it was thought to be a myth until its discovery.
UTHERTON'S SEEDLING
Formerly the preserve of the Brown Snout, Uthertons were better croppers. Fruit small, flushed, eye russetted as in the Brown Snout. Biennial, flowers early to mid-season, triploid.
UXE, PATIENCE
Patience Uxe (1689—178
0) was arguably the world's finest stumpwork embroiderer. Her masterpiece counterpane, Medlars Rampant, was bought by the National Trust, but is too fragile for it to be displayed.
WILLIAM TELL WEAPONS MEET
The colloquial name for an irregularly scheduled airwar game called, at its launch in 1954, the US Air Force World Wide Weapons Meet, a name inspired by the World Series baseball championship. The competitors in this World contest were: the (USAF) Air Defense Command and the (USAF) Air Training Command. There were five more meets till, in 1979, a non-US competitor took part (a Canadian Forces CF-101 unit). According to Patrick J. McGee (SMSgt, USAF (Ret), "During the 1988 meet a total of twelve teams from TAC, ANG, PACAF, USAFE, Alaskan Air Command and Canada participated in on of the most competitive meets ever." In 1996, the games were advertised as the William Tell Weapons Meet, after the USA* marksman famed in (*ed circles) for shooting holes in cheese, W. T. Weapons.
*classified
Wwillmne A. A. A. - see Johnson, Steve; Iowa, Wri
"The Onuspedia (some ripped-out excerpts)" copyright © Anna Tambour, is original to this collection.
The Purloined Tome
Simon's curiosities
Simon Bunche clacked happily with his number 12s. An hour ago he had clicked, and his latest pattern and pic (Badger Love: Front: Two badgers, one holding a bouquet of roses at the door of an English thatched cottage with country garden. Back: The badgers from behind in a valentine of roses. A dolman-shouldered cardigan with full-length sleeves. Poly/mohair Sizes 12-44) winged its electronic way to Cindy Claymore at the Knitting Shack, Kansas City, Missouri. 'Luv this!' Cindy wung back, though it must have been two o'clock in her morning.
'Winnie, stop that!'
Winnie pulled another stitch from his needles.
'I'll drown you!'
She turned on her motor. He laid aside his knitting and either he picked her up or she climbed into his arms. She nibbled an ear as he carried her to his kitchen.
'Tea?'
He filled the electric kettle and took the milk out of the fridge and just as he was washing her milk bowl,
Brrr, went the telephone.
Both the part of Simon who was Simon Bunche, the uncelebrated and poorly paid International-Conflict-Resolution-Museum-Archives curator, and the part of Simon who was 'Winsome Layne', the becoming-quite-known-internationally (and beginning to make real money) British knitwear designer, found it impossible to let a brrring telephone ring. Neither, however, liked phones enough to use them properly so as to know who rings without committing oneself.
Simon dropped the bowl in the sink, its milk moustache needing further scrub, grabbed a dishcloth and rushed to the lounge, to Winnie's disgust.
'Mm?' He cradled the heavy antique handset against his neck whilst he dried his hands.
'Simon?'
'Mm.'
'Simon? ... Simon, it's Giles ... Simon? Giles Moneyfeather.'
'Sorry.' He rubbed the back of his neck. 'So many Gileses.'
'Wanna down a few jars?'
'On a Wednesday night?'
'What should that matter?'
A horse looking out the half-door of a cottage? Or chipmunks sharing a pie on the ledge?
'You there?'
'It's raining.'
The phone emitted a sharp hech hech. Giles, laughing?
'I rather don't think tonight's—'
'I've got something for you.' Giles was persistent, if not perceptive. 'Can't talk about it here.'
The part of Simon that was the curator, the bored putrid curator who worked stiff with cold all winter and stinking of naphthalene all year, and who had, in times past, spouted the most ludicrous crap to anyone naïve enough to be an audience, suddenly remembered that audience: Giles Moneyfeather. Simon remembered Giles like he remembered the time when he was ten and explored the family toaster with a fork. And the next toaster ...
Must've been a cat once. 'The Gout?'
'The Pig and Pepper?'
'Aye.'
Winnie heard Simon perform his silly pre-exit rituals, but she didn't go to the door to say goodbye.
He left, entirely forgetting her, but she thought about him as she cleaned herself. That was his only carton of milk she'd swiped. Unfortunately, half its contents slid under the fridge.
Simon turned up his collar. This was no weather for an umbrella. The rain had become a gale.
~
In the Pig and Pepper
Even if Simon hadn't remembered Giles Moneyfeather's face, he would have been able to guess. Moneyfeather stood out from the genial fug in the Pig and Pepper, like a burr on a custard tart.
Two Guinnesses awaited at a cosy table for two. One glass sat in front of Giles, untouched. Giles waved at Simon and pointed to the other Guinness. Never did a glass of anything look so medicinal.
'Ahh,' said Simon as he sat on the edge of his chair and took his dose. 'What's up?'
'Open it.' Giles pushed over the sodden lump.
Simon sat back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. 'Please.'
Giles shoved his beer aside, reached across the table and untied the cords. The newspaper was pulp that he shovelled off with his palm, revealing the book.
Richly covered, broken-backed, redolent of wet sheep, it made Simon think of a cut-down king on a battlefield—dying but quite capable of getting others killed for the glory of his last moments. This book was as magnificent and sinister. 'Where'd you get this?'
'Open it.'
'You open it.'
Cautiously, Giles opened to a random page, and then another. The book was as wet as a seal, but not waterproof. Each page making a sucking sound upon separation from its neighbour. A drop of water fell from Giles's wrist upon a line of text, and words swirled into muddy obscurity.
He slammed it shut.
'On second thought,' Simon laughed, not a cheery sound. 'Put baby to bed.'
Giles whisked it into his lap.
Simon raised an eyebrow.
~
'And you thought,' Simon rumbled in a voice like rubber balls hitting a padded wall, 'since you didn't see the client's water bottle nor see him spill it all over what you claim is one of the most important pieces in your ruddy library's collection—a cookbook,' he sneered.
'And furthermore, since you didn't notice him pick it up to supposedly wipe on his jacket or something equally barmy, but you did raise your ears at the sound of it cracking its spine to eleven blighted Mondays on that priceless marble floor ...
'You thought that you, a state-of-the-art-as-original-sin librarian, a resource even easier to delete than to pulp ... Don't look at me like that. I can face reality! You thought that this transgression would simply be their excuse, hah hah. As if they need one. That you would simply be ...' Simon pitched his chair so forward on its two front legs, it tried to flip him out. 'You're dead right, of course. But you know that. Yet you thought you'd just steal this and live the good life? A life that I, me, myself have never had the pleasure of?'
He settled his chair back on all fours, too gently. 'You thought, did you ... that you'd horn in on my connections, and escape?'
The naked little place in the crown of Giles' head stared at Simon. 'I wouldn't call it "horn in".'
'Are you mad?'
'But you said.'
'I'm. No.' Simon plucked an ingrown hair out of the back of his left hand. 'Fence. I would never take something from a collection, whatever you might have understood to be true in your, you must admit, delusional mind.'
'But you said, that night at the party—'
'I'm a curator.'
'But—'
'Listen,' Simon grabbed Giles by the pea-coat's lapel. 'Four letters: CCTV.'
'Cameras?'
'We're only the most photographed people on the planet, and you don't think that you —'
'They've never—'
'They don't generally announce.'
'The ... library?'
Simon Bunche's upper eyelids str
etched all the way down over his eyes.
Giles gasped. 'You're not leaving?'
Simon pulled some notes from his back pocket and dropped them on the table.
'Sidown, man! You trying to make a scene?'
Giles subsided, though the crowd had no interest in them, and the only person close enough to hear was a woman of a certain age sitting with a glass of bitters.
'First, Moneyfeather, from the goodness of my heart, and because I have a weakness for fools, I'll help you.'
'Oh, Simon!'
'Take your hand off me.'
Giles recoiled and reached for his backpack.
'Stop that! and take that bloody cash before they think its for one all round.'
A half-sob escaped Giles as he pocketed the money without looking at it. 'I was just getting a pen and—'
'Wanna listen, or fartarse till they get you?'
~
'Nice jersey, Moneyfeather,' Simon said with a wrapping-up briskness. 'Make it yourself?'
Giles coloured. 'Certainly not.'
'Well?'
'I'm off then.'
But Simon was already busy nursing the other glass of Guinness.
~
As he walked, 'I'm a professional,' Giles repeated, along with the rest of the catechism that he had to remember 'alive or dead', as Simon had stressed.
The book nestled against his belly, like a cat come in from the rain.
As he came to the intersection before his block of flats, he realised that he was no longer repeating any words, but humming The Internationale. In the glare of streetlights, he raised his hand, waved, and said in a tone that he would like to be remembered as both brave and stoic: 'All for the best.'
But when he ran up the stairs, his two-at-a-time pace was distinctly un-stoic. In the privacy of his flat, he dumped his pack, and giggled.
~
Secrets of the Theta Alphans