Unicorn, Behemoth, and Leviathan

...are not the names of the Andrews Sisters. They were Patty, Maxene, and LaVerne. If you want to go down that particular rabbit trail, the McGuire Sisters were Chris, Dottie, and Phyllis; the Gabor Sisters were Magda, Zsa Zsa, and Eva; and the tennis-playing Williams Sisters are Serena and Venus.

Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland were also sisters, but they didn't get along very well. The original Ann Landers and the original Dear Abby, advice columnists at rival newspapers, were also sisters named Esther and Pauline. They called each other "Eppie" and "Po-Po".

Enough, already.

Back to the topic at hand, I awoke today with those three words in the title on my mind. I have no idea why. They are all terms found in the King James Version of the Bible, the translation of which from Greek and Hebrew manuscripts was accomplished in the year 1611. English has changed a bit since then.

In various modern translations (I could tell you which ones specifically, but I assume you don't really care), unicorn has become wild ox, wild goat, buffalo, and rhinoceros; behemoth has become hippopotamus, and leviathan has become (take your pick) sea monster or crocodile. On a personal note, I had always assumed leviathan was a whale, but no one who is anyone important agrees with me.

Moving right along, my mother used to say when faced with skepticism, "Vas you dere, Charlie?" which I have learned can be traced to a vaudeville comedian and early radio performer named Jack Pearl, who used it with his Baron Munchausen character, whom he introduced in The Ziegfeld Follies Of The Air radio program in 1932. The rest is history

Actually, everthing is history, unless it is mathematics. You and I will be history someday too. I doubt very much that we will be mathematics.

Speaking of history, here are the names of the winners of the top five categories (best director, best actor, best actress, best supporting actor, best supporting actress, not necessarily in that order) at last night's 91st Academy Awards presentations in Los Angeles, which I didn't watch:

Alfonso Cuaron
Olivia Colman
Rami Malek
Regina King
Mahershala Ali

I never heard of any of them. In my mind, they are already history.

While the rest of you pursue world peace and personal happiness and cheaper prices for food, clothing, and gasoline/petrol, I content myself with getting to the bottom of truly useless information.

As ever, I remain (I hope),
rhymeswithplague