1. C. Ginkgo Biloba is a tree.
2. C. Garcinia Cambogia is a tree.
3. Both A and C. “By the Shores of Gitchee Gumee” is both a line from a famous poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and a satirical novel by Tama Janowitz about the Slivenowiczes, a trailer park trash family, etc.
4. It should be obvious that Hiawatha wore a toupee to keep his wigwam.
5. A, B, and C are all written in trochaic tetrameter. A is from “The Song of Hiawatha” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; B is from “San Francisco” (a parody by James Linen, circa 1865) ; C is from “Hiawatha’s Photographing” (an 1869 parody by Lewis Carroll, who introduced it with an entire paragraph written in trochaic tetrameter without the line breaks a poem would have: “In an age of imitation, I can claim no special merit for this slight attempt at doing what is known to be so easy. Any fairly practised writer, with the slightest ear for rhythm, could compose, for hours together, in the easy running metre of ‘The Song of Hiawatha.’ Having, then, distinctly stated that I challenge no attention in the following little poem to its merely verbal jingle, I must beg the candid reader to confine his criticism to its treatment of the subject.”)
The following is from yet another parody of Longfellow’s poem entitled “The Modern Hiawatha” and attributed to George A. Strong:
He killed the noble Mudjokivis.
Of the skin he made him mittens,
Made them with the fur side inside,
Made them with the skin side outside.
He, to get the warm side inside,
Put the inside skin side outside.
He, to get the cold side outside,
Put the warm side fur side inside.
That’s why he put the fur side inside,
Why he put the skin side outside,
Why he turned them inside outside.
6. The correct answer is “None of the above” because the actor is Sean Penn, the English explorer is William Penn, and Phnom Penh is a city in Cambodia, not Cambogia. It is always wiser to read carefully and not assume that I made a typographical error and meant Cambodia. The fact that “None of the above” was not one of the choices is irrelevant. You were not told that the list was exhaustive.
7. False. It is true that most geckos cannot blink, but they often lick their eyes to keep them clean and moist. As far as I know, this is not true of the ginkgo, which is -- all together, class -- a tree.
Thank you for participating or not participating. There was no theme, trick, or ulterior motive to my quiz. I presented it to you only because April Fools Day somehow slipped past us uncelebrated. Better late than never.
“Ginkgo Biloba is a tree”
ReplyDeleteIt’s also said to be one of the oldest trees that still exists. I saw them in Mississippi, and they’re here in Oregon too. The females stink, so the ones that you see planted are usually males. I recall something about ginkgoes would be extinct by now if not for being planted by people as temple trees in the Far East. I once lived on an old plantation near Natchez and hung my laundry under an old ginkgo. I soon noticed that my laundry smelled like a wet dog when I took it in, but it took me awhile to realize that the problem was the gingko. Just passing under it, it didn’t smell bad, but the laundry would stay out for hours, which was enough time to pick up the odor.
Snowbrush, you know a lot about ginkgo trees. We used to hang our laundry near a mulberry tree when I was a boy in Texas, but stopped when our bed linens got purple spots on them. The spots were from mulberries that had passed through birds first. We also had chinaberry trees and bowdark < i>bois d'arc trees and mesquite trees and white oak trees, but no ginkgo trees.
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