But one has to consider...

Carole Middleton:

Carole’s daughter Kate (with a friend):

Carole’s daughter Pippa (with two friends):

and Carole’s son James:

Maybe there’s something to that heredity thing after all.

Qongqothwane (The Click Song)

The other day in my post on the 175th anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto, I mentioned that actress Betty White pronounces it the Spanish way (“San Hah-cheen-toh”) and Texans pronounce it the Texas way (“Sanja Sinta”). In the comments section, Egghead (Vonda from Oregon) said that when she doesn’t know how to pronounce the name of a place she just begins speaking in African click language. She then said of course she didn’t know what she was saying but she can do a mean click. I am not making this up. She closed her comment by saying, “Another great post for you to do research on, Bob!”

There’s an awful lot I do not know about an awful lot of things, but I didn’t have to do any research whatsoever to know that Vonda was probably referring to the Xhosa language of South Africa. I first learned about it way back in the mid-sixties when singer Miriam Makeba, whose musical career was going great guns in the United States until she married Stokely Carmichael, sang Qongqothwane.
I think I also recall that in those days the word Xhosa was spelled X!hosa with the exclamation point indicating the click.

According to Wikipedia, Qongqothwane is a traditional song of the Xhosa people of South Africa. It is sung at weddings to bring good fortune. In the Western World it is mainly known as The Click Song, a nickname given to the song by European colonials who could not pronounce its Xhosa title, which has many click consonants in it. The Xhosa title literally means “knock-knock beetle,” which is a popular name for the Xestobium rufovillosum, a woodboring beetle that makes a distinctive ticking sound. This beetle is believed by the Xhosa to bring good luck and rain.

The song is known world-wide thanks to the interpretation of South African singer Miriam Makeba (herself a Xhosa). In her discography the songs appears in several versions, both with title Qongqothwane and as The Click Song.

Here it is. Enjoy! (3:15)

After viewing and hearing the video, please join me in wishing Prince William and his Kate good luck and rain.

Edith Head must be turning over in her grave, or a lookback at the royal wedding

Now that the big event is history, check out this Royal Wedding Fashion Report Card (19 photos in all) put together by the folks at Yahoo.

Included are the good (Kate Middleton, Pippa Middleton, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson), the bad (Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie), the bland (Duchess of Cornwall), and the downright ugly (HRH Princess Anne, who, in my opinion, looked like a charwoman gussied up for a day at the racetrack).

The peacocks were out in full regalia as well. The British are always top-notch at pomp and circumstance, but among the men this much spit, polish, brass, and military froufrou has not been seen in one location since the Battle of Trafalgar.

This has been another non-controversial post by rhymeswithplague.

We few, we happy few.

The nuptial day of the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge is apparently an even happier occasion than we thought. Either that or the groom’s family arrived already sloshed.

In what is surely a stroke of journalistic brilliance, at the exact moment when the next Prince of Wales was saying, “I, William Arthur Philip Louis, take thee, Catherine Elizabeth,” and the eyes and attention of the entire civilized world were fixed on the happy couple, our roving reporter today turned and pointed his camera at another part of Westminster Abbey and managed to capture the reaction of his grandmother, father, and stepmother.

The late Queen Victoria, however, the great-great-great-great-grandmother of the groom, in an attempt to maintain a modicum of royal decorum, issued a statement from beyond the grave through her publicist, saying, “We are not amused.” This is hardly surprising, as she died in 1901 and thus is unable to grasp fully the complexities and nuances of maintaining the monarchy in the twenty-first century.

Sharp-eyed viewers will note that although Her Majesty and the Prince of Wales sat upon exquisite Royal Blue Portable Wicker Thrones created especially for the occasion by Thrones ’R’ Us, the Duchess of Cornwall was relegated to a Royal Aluminum Lawn Chair. The Duke of Edinburgh, typically, was nowhere in sight. Perhaps he slipped away to find more bubbly.