Something Fishy Going On
I was never much a fisherman, even though when I was growing up I spent summers on Martha's Vineyard, where fishing can be a religion. When I was very small I caught scup and flounders with the best of them, and usually threw them back. I always identified with the fish. I went surf fishing for sea bass once and hooked a big one. It was putting up a great fight, describing classic arcs in the air as it leapt above the line of breakers, and all the while I was experiencing an equally intense internal struggle with the way my life had become potentially fatally (for the fish anyway) involved with him. My Hemingwayesque saga ended when mercifully the line broke. He made off with my cheap lure and, I hope, a sense of exultation. He got away, but I was the one who was off the hook.
I recommend the blog www.flyfishingdowntheriveroftime.blogspot.com for a sense of the poetry and ballet of this unique form of sport fishing, which in other variations can be as brutal as bear baiting and bullfighting. Willard lets the fish go.
posted by John M Crowther @ 7:35 AM
7 Comments:
>>”And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.” <<
That’s a very touching story you tell about how you felt when the sea bass got away, but I have always wondered if the whale felt the same way about Jonah
I think the real problem here is believing in a god that goes around speaking unto fish, whatever that means. Check out Mike Angel's Jonah and the whale in the Sistine Chapel. The whale looks like a big grouper that couldn't get his mouth around Jonah's knee.
The eminent Hebrew scholar, C.F. Keil, claimed that the word “dahg” used in the Bible only means a “great fish,” not necessarily a whale. Although C.F. did not deal specifically with groupers, his brother F.C. Keel, the eminent expert on limbless aquatic vertebrate animal with fins and internal gills claimed that as some groupers have been known to be over a meter in length weighing up to 100 kg, groupers would certainly qualify as “dahg,” especially if you happened to be a minnow.
I am in complete accord with you that the “dahg” mentioned in the Old Testament did not actually swallow Jonah; he just bit him on the knee cap. God did not order the “dahg” to vomit up Jonah, He just asked him to let go, a relatively easy task for your average grouper, but –needless to say-- an almost impossible one for Moby Dick.
No comment tonight on the cartoon, just more, please, from the two of you. Despite being dead tired, am falling on the floor here with laughter.
Except to say, good cartoon as usual.
Indeed, and that's where we get "dawg" from, as in, "'Sup, dawg?" (translation: "What's up, my good friend?")
I always suspected that dawg had roots that went much deeper than the ghetto. That guy hanging on the street corner next to his hella Cadillac El Dorado is a very big fish.
Everyone commenting is leaving out the new black vernacular "Hey Dawg!", which may be, we now know, a biblical reference - or perhaps it's a barb pointed at my own supersized canine. In any case, it's a great cartoon, and thanks so much for the plug.
W
>>Check out Mike Angel's Jonah and the whale in the Sistine Chapel. <<
For those of you who don’t live in the Eternal City I suggest going to Google/ Images; type “Sistine Chapel Jonah” into the box and you will see numerous artistic views by Mr. Angel. Closer examination seems to indicate that the “dahg” in question was not masticating on Jonah’s knee cap but higher up on the leg. It may very well be that the “dahg” intended to go for the knee, but ended up with a thigh bone (femur)instead. Groupers are notoriously myopic.
Post a Comment
<< Home