'Round and 'round he goes, and where he stops nobody knows

A few years back a woman named Mary Humphrey who raises goats in Ohio left a few comments on my other blog, the one that is a Rolls-Royce. When she happened to mention the breeds of her goats, I said they sounded like a law firm. In the following list, can you spot the breeds of goats and also the one real law firm?

1. Harpswell, Hemswell, Blyborough & Willoughton

2. Saanans, Alpines, Nubians & Boers

3. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern

4. Gobel, Lipitas, Shackelford & Ogletree

5. Herrera, Rosenblum, Petrovsky & Mock

6. Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Beane

7. Lamborghini, Ferrari, Dusenberg & Tesla

8. Bentley, Bentley & Bentley

9. Christ, Marx, Wood, & Wei


Stumped?

Number 8 is the law firm. It's in Marietta, Georgia. A fourth Bentley joined the firm in 2014. He has not yet been made a partner, so they have resisted changing the name to Bentley, Bentley, Bentley & Bentley. For many years an actual Bentley automobile sat in front of their building as the only indication of what might be inside.

Number 2 are the goat breeds.

Number 1 are villages in England that Yorkshire Pudding mentioned in his blog recently. If you don't know who Number 3 are, well, shame on you. Number 4 are just some random names I threw together. Gobel reminded me of both George Gobel, an American comedian, and Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler's buddy. Ogletree's used to be a grocery store near my home in Cobb County, Georgia. Number 5 are former managers of mine at IBM, two in Boca Raton, Florida, and two in Atlanta, Georgia. Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Beane (Number 6) was an early name of Merrill Lynch, an American stock trading company that eventually became the wealth management division of the Bank of America. Lamborghini etc. (Number 7) are luxury automobiles, unlike Bentley, Bentley & Bentley (Number 8), which is, as you know, a law firm. This brings us to Number 9: Christ, Marx, Wood & Wei.

In 1970, Ira Levin, who had written Rosemary's Baby earlier and would later write The Boys From Brazil and The Stepford Wives, wrote This Perfect Day, a dystopian novel of the future. It opens with a children's playground rhyme that mystified me when I first read it but by the time I finished reading the book it became perfectly understandable. Reviewer Jo Walton called This Perfect Day "unputdownable" and I agree. Forty-five years later I can still recite from memory the children's playground rhyme:

Christ, Marx, Wood and Wei
Led us to this perfect day.
Marx, Wood, Wei and Christ
All but Wei were sacrified.
Wood, Wei, Christ and Marx
Gave us lovely schools and parks.
Wei, Christ, Marx and Wood
Made us humble, made us good.

Lest you think I am prone to flitting from subject to subject, I will close now.

Better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Talk about closing the barn door after the horse is gone.




P.S. -- This is definitely not George Gobel.

P.P.S. -- I still think Saanans, Alpines, Nubians & Boers sounds like a law firm.

Are you serious? En popgrupp från Skellefteå i Västerbotten?

I remember reading in the early seventies -- and I hasten to add that I’m talking about the early seventies, people, not my early seventies -- a novel by Ira Levin called This Perfect Day. The always-nearly-reliable Wikipedia calls it “a heroic science fiction novel of a technocratic dystopia” and adds that it is “often compared to Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World.”

I would just like to point out here that the title of George Orwell’s book isn’t Nineteen Eighty-Four, it’s 1984. I’m just sayin’.

The Swedish-language Wikipedia, however, says that “This Perfect Day är en popgrupp från Skellefteå i Västerbotten, bildad 1987. Gruppnamnet är lånat från Ira Levin’s science fiction-roman En vacker dag från 1970” which according to Google Translate means “This Perfect Day is a pop group from Skellefteå in northern Sweden, formed in 1987. The group name is borrowed from Ira Levin’s science fiction novel A beautiful day from 1970.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m beginning to understand why achieving world peace is such an elusive goal.

A few years earlier, Ira Levin had written Rosemary’s Baby and a few years hence he would go on to write The Boys From Brazil as well. All three of those books kept me turning the pages.

In many ways, This Perfect Day is similar to Logan’s Run by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, published in 1967. I remember seeing Michael York as Logan in the 1976 movie version and having a feeling of déjà vu. To be fair, I suppose if I had read Logan’s Run when it first came out, the feeling of déjà vu would have occurred when I read This Perfect Day. That’s life.

On the first page of This Perfect Day the following poem is printed, along with an explanation that it is chanted by children bouncing a ball on a playground:

Christ, Marx, Wood and Wei,
Led us to this perfect day.
Marx, Wood, Wei and Christ,
All but Wei were sacrificed.
Wood, Wei, Christ and Marx,
Gave us lovely schools and parks.
Wei, Christ, Marx and Wood,
Made us humble, made us good.

I could just see those children bouncing that ball and chanting this poem. I was hooked. I had to find out what it meant and why they would do such a thing. I also was intrigued by the face in the book jacket illustration: it had one green eye and one brown eye.



I’m not going to tell you what happens in the book; you’ll have to find out for yourself.

Anyway, when the poem popped into my consciousness this morning out of nowhere (well, okay, out of my dim, distant past and my incredible brain’s long-term storage), my next impulse was to compose a little poem of my own using four names chosen completely at random.

Here it is:

Frances, Ian, Neil, and Shirley,
Stayed up late and rose up early.
Ian, Neil, Shirley, and Frances,
All but Neil wore underpantses.
Neil, Shirley, Frances, and Ian,
Couldn’t believe what their eyes were seein’.
Shirley, Frances, Ian, and Neil,
If anyone could ever deserve the harsh punishment
that one day will be meted out to Neil at the Old Bailey, he’ll.



Now if I can come up with a book to go along with the poem, I just know I will make a fortune.

Especially if I also form a popgrupp.