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Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland”
from Slashfilm:
- Bandersnatch, The: evil creature under the control of the Red Queen.
- Brillig: 4 o’clock in the afternoon. When one begins broiling things for dinner.
- Crims: The central area of Underland.
- Downal wyth Bluddy Behg Hid: Down with the Red Queen, the slogan of the Resistance.
- Ezel: High, go higher, go up.
- Fairfarren: Farewell. May you travel far under fair skies.
- Frabjous day: The day Alice slays the Jabberwocky and frees Underland from the oppression of the Red Queen.
- Frumious: Dirty and smelly.
- Futterwacken: The Underlanders’ dance of unbridled joy.
- Gallymoggers: Crazy.
- Gribling: The day Alice will return to Underland.
- Guddler’s scut: Thief’s butt.
- Gummer Slough: Dangerous swamp of thick viscous mud.
- Horunvendush Day: The day the Red Queen took control of Underland.
- Jabberwocky: A deadly creature employed as the Red Queen’s ultimate weapon.
- Jubjub Bird: A Bird under the control of the Red Queen.
- Kiotchyn: ‘Heads’ up or ‘pay attention’.
- Naught for usal: It’s no use trying.
- Noge: Go low down.
- Nunz: Wait or ‘Don’t go, not now’.
- Oraculum: The Calender of all the days of Ulnderland. Each day has its own title and illustration.
- Orgal: To the left.
- Outlands: The untamed land to the west of Witzend.
- Outlandish: The old language spoken only in the Outlands and used by the Underland resistance as a secret code in the revolution against the Red Queen.
- Pishsalver: A potion that makes one shrink.
- Queast: A land to the east, but ‘not in the least’.
- Quillian: The following day after Alice returns.
- Saganistute: A wise person of poetry and vision.
- Salazen Grum: A port city where the Red Queen lives.
- Shukrn: Faeces. Ewww.
- Sloth: Slowly
- Stang: To the right.
- Slurvish: Selfish or self-centered.
- Snud: A region in the south of Underland.
- Tulgey Wood: Where Alice meets the Jabberwocky.
- Underland: The real name for the place Alice calls Wonderland.
- Upelkuchen: A cake that makes one grow.
- Slurking urpal slackush scrum: rude or dirty words of the most foul meaning.
- Witzend: The western land where the Mad Hatter and March Hare were born.
- Yadder: Far away. Way yadder beyond the Crossling in Snud.
- Zounder: A warning to ‘look out behind you!’
[originally posted 2003]
It takes a certain amount of courage to believe a metaphor, a certain amount of recklessness to use them, a certain amount of panache to carry them, but beyond that the certainties end. Metaphors have the singular distinction of being preterlogical, beyond logical, true and untrue; where paradox is a capitulation of the mind, the line between reason and faith, metaphors work within reason, fuzzing the edges a little. When we say that God is a rock we mean, simultaneously, is and is not: God is like a rock in that He is unchanging, solid, faithful, but not like a rock in the sense of inanimate, voiceless, and somewhat brown.
“You’re not necessarily supposed to believe it,” he says wearily. “You’re just supposed to believe in it. It’s like– a metaphor.”
“I forget,” I say. “What’s a metaphor?”
“Cows and sheep mostly,”
The rationalist, if I may segue like a rock, hates metaphors, though they are inescapable. Metaphors are too messy, they go everywhere, those pesky words; lazy words, concrete words, literal words that’s what the rationalist needs, words that mean what we want them to mean, too dead to crawl away, words that make us feel like we are gods. But sadly, though we may think it, we do not make the words mean what they mean, there is a greater Word above all words, none other than the Name above all names.
