Brought up by two reference librarians, Phil was bullied as a foal.
Phil O’Lologous
By Phil O’Lologous
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News The Secret Jewish History Of General Tso’s Chicken
There are two hidden truths about China’s General Tso, whose ill-advised military incursion into Japan put the miso in misogyny and the saké into “for heaven’s sake. The first is that he had a speech impediment. The second is that he was a coward. This latter character flaw was resented by the rank and file,…
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News What Strange Salty Angels Are These?
Is that an angel on your shoulder or are you just unhappy to see me? I ask this of the “Prayer Police” — the folks who put the “nag” in “synagogue” — who reported Jared Kushner for mispronouncing a word and thus changing a sentence from malche ha-mlachim, “King of Kings,” to melach ha-malachim, “Salty…
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News Putting the Rump Into (the Name) Trump
‘So, President Trump, when did you stop beating your wives?” Sounds like a trick question, but actually it’s a Turkic question. A century ago, Tāztı Çeksmikz, the Turkish general infamous for long-winded speeches and insisting on moustaches as part of the military uniform, was so disliked by his soldiers that they referred to him initially…
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Culture Vaccination Comes From Cows and Jews
I have chosen to soil the sabbatical year — to put the shit into Shmita — by announcing that this will be my final Phil O’Lologous column. After producing 7,618 — or exactly a Dyson Number — of columns, I will retire to my dictionaries, my tomes and my vellum to practice cunning linguistics alone….
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Culture What If Miley Cyrus Did the Nasty in the Shvitz?
All the talk in my local sauna over the last few months has been about twerking or, in its YIVO-authorized spelling, tverking. One recent Friday morning I reached under the bench for the 1689 vellum edition of the Urban Dictionary that the management stores next to the birch branches to find what it says on…
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Culture Lost in Language: Of Dead Dogs, Living Lions & Bifid Uvulae
The Backward is the Forward’s annual satirical Purim edition. Enjoy! More stories here… In Kohelet it says, “For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope; for a living dog is better than a dead lion.” Now quite why the writer of Kohelet wants to be joined to a living dog…
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Culture Pronouns of the World Unite!
[ ![][2]][2] When I first started writing this weekly column, almost 115 years ago, Karl Marx was the Simon Cowell of the era — a loudmouth from Britain passing judgment on the working class. Being dead hadn’t stopped Marx and I’d be surprised if it stops Cowell. At that time it was barely acceptable to…
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Culture How the French Put the Olé Into Idiolect
[ ![][2]][2] ‘Who put the condom in condominium?” asks avid reader Hugo Hefnerovich: more as an accusation than as a question. Despite the tone, the inquiry is worthy of further investigation, since the French inventor of the sheep gut prophylactic was a descendant of Rashi who had fled south from Troyes to the eponymous town…
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