The Anatomy of Mischief reminded me that Onstad likes to use outlandish reference materials in his strips.
Dictionaries, manuals, guides, short histories, etc. Whatchu got? I have better things to do than gather a bunch of links right now, but I think this could be interesting what with his invention of phrases and all.
I do have time to link to this Radiolab transcript about Shakespeare inventing words and phrases:
http://www.radiolab.org/2010/aug/09/transcript/JAMES SHAPIRO: He’s taking words that ordinarily are not stuck together; things like mad cap, ladybird. Shoving them together, eye drops, to achieve a kind of atomic power. Eyesore, eyeball.
JAD ABUMRAD: He did eyeball?
JAMES SHAPIRO: Yes.
ROBERT KRULWICH: It’s hard to understand how someone could think of, that up, it seems like it’s always been there.
JAMES SHAPIRO: If you ask me what his greatest gift is. He's putting them together into phrases that have stuck in our heads. So truth will out.
...
JAMES SHAPIRO: Crack of doom. My favorite: Dead as a doornail. A dish fit for the gods. A dog will have his day. Fainthearted, fool's paradise, forever and a day, foregone conclusion, the game is afoot, the game is up. Greek to meet, I’m in a pickle, in my heart of hearts, in my mind’s eye, kill with kindness. (Sigh.) Believe it or not, knock, knock, who's there?
...
JAMES SHAPIRO: How did he create phrases that stick in the mind? That make it seems as if they always existed.
...
JAMES SHAPIRO: Shakespeare doesn’t write a lot about process. But there are one or two places that he does, in a poem called “Lucrece”. In which a woman is raped; “Lucrece’s Rape.” And she has to write a letter to her husband explaining what happened to her. And she's struggling to find words in which to do this and finally she picks up the pen and it goElizabeth Spelke: She prepares to write. First hovering o’er the paper with her quill; Conceit and grief and eager combat fight; What wit sets down is blotted straight with will; This is too curious good, this blunt and ill. Much like a press of people at a door Throng her inventions, which shall go before. I’ll read that couplet again: Much like a press of people at a door Throng her inventions, which shall go before. If you want to extrapolate from this something that Shakespeare might have himself experienced, you have a situation which all these ideas are pressing. It’s like a throng of them. Who’s getting through that doorway first?
JAD ABUMRAD: It's a little bit maybe like that experience you might have at a nightmare New York club. We’re you’ve got like thousands of people in a tiny space and everyone’s trying to push their way out, and they’re like, “God, let me through the door. Get out of my way!” It’s just like this
JAMES SHAPIRO: Throng of images, sounds, conceits, thoughts, ideas. And they are providing the pressure that's needed to produce words.
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