"Instead I'm going to mention the cognitive dissonance induced by seeing exotic names like Zilagon, Gualikh, and Guak associated with the homely (to me) place name Florida"

Hah! That was exactly my reaction when I first started reading Pratchett and came across moreporks everywhere. Although, these days, our native morepork is probably almost as fictional as Pratchett's version.

Actually, Doak Campbell Stadium,where King Bobby Bowden has reigned yea these many years, while not directly across the street, is within walking distance of the state Capitol (15-20 minutes) in Tallahassee, and especially at this time of year, probably ranks higher in the estimation of locals.

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In Chateaubriand's "Atala and Rene" Florida is a mysterious exotic place where crocodiles sing to the setting sun, and so on. I want to reread it cometime, but at the moment it's at the top of my list of overwritten books, immediately ahead of John Updike.

Fee fie foe fum! I smell the blood of a spambotman!

"Fee fie foe fum! I smell the blood of a spambotman!"

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Reading the plot summary made me very eager to see and hear the opera. Zilagon is definitely a bass-baritone rôle, I think, and Veleuma is a contralto.

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"places for visiting magnates" reminds me of the visit I paid to DESY, the particle accelerator in Hamburg. It was on that occasion that I was introduced to my wife.

Those exotic American names obviously exercised a profound draw on European writers. There's Brecht's Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, in which a musical climax occurs with the mezzo apostrophizing Pensacola. It's also the source of the Alabama and Benares (so not just American) songs; the heroine comes either from Oklahoma or Havana; and the hero spent seven years working as a lumberjack in the snow-white forests of Alaska.

And a couple of years later, his Seven Deadly Sins ballet opens with the lyric

Meine Schwester und ich stammen aus Louisiana,
Wo die Wasser des Mississippi unterm Monde fließen...

And the two sisters travel from Memphis to Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, before ending up back in Louisiana.

hjaelmer, please pardon the slight digression, but your mention of Brecht's use of exotic American name put me in mind of Christian Morgenstern's Der Lattenzaun. It seems even more apt since it features both an architect (as does this blog) and an "exotic" spelling of "Amerika". The "punchline" of Der Lattenzaun also always reminds me of Emo Phillips' "Most States", but that's a whole nother club of pudding.

By chance, the city of Nogales is almost a palindrome of Zilagon (selagon).

Reg Rebtre bor is a palindrome of Robert Berger. By chance, in Norwegian, it means "Reg Rebtree lives!" (Ok, the exclamation point is poetic license.) Now all we have to do is find Reg Rebtree and hide him...

I'm so busy today. Look Language, I've found you a really good Russian post-Revolution graphics and films site with lots of interesting links, too. Actually I got it off Conrad and his October 5 piece, Wer band dich in Schlummer so bang?.

Check out Обломок империи / A Fragment of Empire (1929) at the top of the page.

There are indeed crocodiles(Crocodylus acutus) in Florida. Perhaps 2,000 of them live in the swamps of extreme southern Florida.

Chateaubriand would not have known about them. They were not described until 1875.

They do not sing.

I remember an episode of Space 1999 set on the planet "Luton". They tried to disguise the joke by having the cast pronounce it in a cod-Chinese way ("Loo Ton") but it was pretty funny if you came from the UK.

Check out Обломок империи / A Fragment of Empire (1929) at the top of the page.

As it happens, I have a beloved T-shirt with that image on it. (MOMA once showed a series of early Russian films.)

T shirts are like pets, you get very attached to them and then they die in the washing machine (microwave, whatever).

J'ai huerte, savez-vous, d'incroyables Florides
Melant aux fleurs des yeux de pantheres a peaux
d'hommes....

[Plus one circumflex, one acute, and two graves].

Rimbaud, "Bateau Ivre"

Well, I knew that there have once been an Iberia and an Albania in the Caucasus, but... ;-)

What's a morepork? Is that something to eat?

"What is a Morepork?"
Morepork

That's a very nice owl, Stuart.

Something for us middle-aged men that I heard on the BBC, a quote from a newspaper headline: 'New Non-Invasive Prostate Test Gets Thumbs Up'.

"That's a very nice owl"

Indeed. I was saddened to learn a few years ago that these islands were once home not only to the largest eagle yet knownd, but also to a much larger owl than the morepork.

largest eagle yet known

I think you didn't put in the link, or it vanished. I love owls even though I suspect that one ate our parrot, Kiri (named after a New Zealander).

Yeah, someone should eat Ms Te Kanawa too. Well past her best, if not yet as extinct as the Haast eagle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haast_Eagle

AJP Crown: It was on that occasion that I was introduced to my wife.

Up until that point, conversation around the Crown breakfast table had been perforce somewhat stilted.

Yes. You see, I'm English.

Young Mencius was such a prig that some other Confucian had to explain to him that it was OK if his wife sometimes comported herself in an undignified and indiscreet manner in his presence.

In the other Confucian's presence? I think he was a player, and young Mencius was getting played.

Not that there's anything wrong with politeness, but the Taoists were a lot nicer than the Confucians.

Yes. You see, I'm English.

These passengers, by reason of their clinging to a mast,
Upon a desert island were eventually cast.
They hunted for their meals, as ALEXANDER SELKIRK used,
But they couldn't chat together — they had not been introduced...

http://math.boisestate.edu/GaS/bab_ballads/html/etiquette.html

Or:
http://www.xkcd.com/302/

There's a joke about two Danes, two Swedes and two Norwegians being cast away on a desert island that ends, 'and the Swedes were still waiting to be introduced', but I can't remember the middle.

There's a joke about the Norwegian who went on a cruise and found himself on a slave galley ship instead. The guy rowing next to him was a Swede who said something like "and they did the same thing last year too," but I can't remember the setup. It seems the Swedes don't do too well in these jokes.

This Florida reminds me of Wallace Stevens's, which is mythic even though the poet visited the actual Florida.

As the immense dew of Florida
Brings forth
The big-finned palm
And green vine angering for life . . .

Or:

Foam and cloud are one,
Sultry moon-monsters
Are dissolving.