A Note of Explanation

Yes, I know; no more blogs are needed in the world. I really only need one because there was no other good way to participate in "Random Flickr Blogging" (explained here), a game my brother invented and hosts on his excellent blog If I Ran the Zoo. Needless to point out, his is the best blog title on the Internet, taken from the title of a Dr. Seuss book. Since that was already taken, I had to sort through a bunch of less-inspiring choices. Either as evidence of a spectacular lack of imagination, or in conceptual solidarity with my brother and in tribute to his wisdom, I kept coming back to Dr. Seuss titles. On Beyond Zebra, written the year I was born, would have been ideal ("Fighting alphabetical fundamentalism since 1955"), but that was taken as well. On Beyond Thnad (Thnad being the last of the imaginary extra letters after Z in On Beyond Zebra)? Arcane and potentially incomprehensible and/or unpronounceable.

Dr. Seuss' third book (1939), after And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street and The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, is The King's Stilts. Not quite the anapestic orgy of his later works, it's a mixture of prose and rhyme. Like many of his books, there's allegory aplenty, intended or imagined. This time the themes are: Authoritarian resentment of pleasure; the interdependence of seemingly unrelated elements in sustaining a precarious world, and the consequences of reckless, short-sighted disregard of that interdependence; the role of leisure in a balanced life; humility, loyalty, etc., etc.

Anyway, I'm choosing to identify with all of that, and the title wasn't already taken, so...