{"id":50134,"date":"2021-05-31T16:48:36","date_gmt":"2021-05-31T20:48:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=50134"},"modified":"2021-05-31T16:48:36","modified_gmt":"2021-05-31T20:48:36","slug":"animal-news-a-wandering-meatloaf-i-a-thing-of-rock-hard-teeth-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=50134","title":{"rendered":"Animal news: “A wandering meatloaf I, a thing of rock-hard teeth…” what?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If, like me, you’ve never heard of the gunboot chiton (it’s a mollusk), welcome to the world of weird critters. <\/a><\/p>\n

Which reminds me of Richard Strauss’s opera, “Die \u00e4gyptische Helen,”\u00a0<\/a><\/i>(in English, “The Egyptian Helen,” that is, Helen of Troy. Since the libretto is not what anyone would call factual, I have no idea why Helen wound up in Egypt). Strauss<\/a> and his great, if occasionally impenetrably elliptical librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, introduced us to an on-stage character with a contralto voice who was…a gigantic clam, or some other kind of mollusk. (What the thing looks like on stage depends entirely upon the imagination of the production’s designer.)<\/p>\n

The more euphemistic description of this creature is “an omniscient sea-shell.” Okay. In the Wikipedia entry for the opera, there is a note, as follows: “It remains the only major opera in the repertory with a role for an omniscient sea-shell.<\/sup>”<\/p>\n

My addendum note: I’ve never heard of a minor<\/em> opera in the repertory with a singing omniscient sea-shell.<\/p>\n

P.S. Less odd but oddly coincidental, a few days ago I decided that my next cuisine venture would be meatloaf. I make a pretty good one. And I’m going out now to buy the ingredients.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If, like me, you’ve never heard of the gunboot chiton (it’s a mollusk), welcome to the world of weird critters. Which reminds me of Richard Strauss’s opera, “Die \u00e4gyptische Helen,”\u00a0(in English, “The Egyptian Helen,” that is, Helen of Troy. Since … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4775,1175],"tags":[7290,7294,7291,7293,5137,7292,7295,1044],"class_list":["post-50134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animal-news","category-the-facts-of-life","tag-die-agyptische-helena","tag-gunboot-chiton","tag-helen-of-troy","tag-hugo-von-hofmannsthal","tag-richard-strauss","tag-the-egyptian-helen","tag-wandering-meatloaf","tag-wikipedia"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t