Craft Notes
“The camels’ smell was also a bone of contention”
The stupendous fictioneer and performance artist Ben Hersey was just telling me about some forgotten camels. Apparently, back before he was President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis was Franklin Pierce’s Secretary of War, and he was convinced by some camel enthusiasts in the U.S. Army—veterans of conflicts with those nasty Native Americans in Florida—that camels would be a badass idea for soldiers in the Southwest. So Davis ordered some dudes off to Tunis to buy some camels. You can read more about the camel episode, but just imagine the spectacle of these pre-Civil War American soldiers bumbling around Northern Africa, haggling with camel dealers. It makes you want a Drunk History episode at least. It makes you wonder what other excellent narratives are floating around out there, recessed from canonical history for being too ridiculous or convoluted to explain. To fit. What are some of your favorite offshoots from history? After Google buys history, will this era be known for its “narrative neutrality?” Do we have nook and cranny concerns? Isn’t it fun on any storytelling level to break “history,” exposing everything as the subjective, harebrained, non-narrative shitstorm that experience really is? How long will it take someone to say “rhizome” if we talk about this? Should we take a shot when someone says it? Are histrionics truer than history? After the camels turned out to be a bust as military equipment, they were sold to zoos, circuses, and private ranchers. Why didn’t they work? Why didn’t camels become part of the military glory we call History?
Tags: ben hersey, camels
take a shot every time you see a camel
Camels were briefly used in colonial-era Barbados to transport sugar.
THEY WERE BROUGHT TO SASKATCHEWAN IN THE EIGHTEENTH OR NINETEENTH CENTURY OR SOMETHING AND THEY DID NOT FARE WELL.
ZZZIPP, are you Canadian? You are the best commenter on this site.
take a shot every time you see a camel
Miller of Ipswich: Crosman’s my boy, we were there when the Seminoles came at us in the everglades. They had panthers and alligators on leashes and they was, they was being pulled, like in tow on water skis.
Our horses, man, the horses turned away. they were terrified. the men too. so we are retreating right. we’ve no choice. But even as we turn to flee we face death again in the spindly roots of the mangrove tree. i kid you not men. limbs, both human and equine, tangled. Many die.
How Crosman and I escaped, well that’s a tale for another day. What’s important now is taking Florida and her gorgeous white sandy beaches. There is an animal they say, in the arab lands, that neither eats nor drinks and carries astronomical loads. not just that! but it’s legs are more spindly than even those mangroves that plagues us, oh mercy. boy’s let get us some fucking camels.
Camels were briefly used in colonial-era Barbados to transport sugar.
do people know about other funny things that happened in history that no one talks about
THEY WERE BROUGHT TO SASKATCHEWAN IN THE EIGHTEENTH OR NINETEENTH CENTURY OR SOMETHING AND THEY DID NOT FARE WELL.
ZZZIPP, are you Canadian? You are the best commenter on this site.
alligators on leashes!
Miller of Ipswich: Crosman’s my boy, we were there when the Seminoles came at us in the everglades. They had panthers and alligators on leashes and they was, they was being pulled, like in tow on water skis.
Our horses, man, the horses turned away. they were terrified. the men too. so we are retreating right. we’ve no choice. But even as we turn to flee we face death again in the spindly roots of the mangrove tree. i kid you not men. limbs, both human and equine, tangled. Many die.
How Crosman and I escaped, well that’s a tale for another day. What’s important now is taking Florida and her gorgeous white sandy beaches. There is an animal they say, in the arab lands, that neither eats nor drinks and carries astronomical loads. not just that! but it’s legs are more spindly than even those mangroves that plagues us, oh mercy. boy’s let get us some fucking camels.
Probably.
do people know about other funny things that happened in history that no one talks about
alligators on leashes!
zing
Probably.
zing
I didn’t understand the rhizome reference. Sorry.
If only we could harness a critical load of curious historical episodes into the baddest story collection ever to be set in print.
The alligators on leashes thing made me think of (the recent) Bad Lieutenant, where the perspective at points is that of New Orleans’ reptilian inhabitants. As if Werner Herzog is asking a similar question to this post, inviting alternate histories.
Alligators have the funniest little legs, but boy can they motor – vroooom catch that chihuahua/ injin!
sometimes people like to talk about philosophical rhizomes whenever anyone is enthusiastic about messes; botanical rhizomes are actually pretty terrific: http://candidcandidacy.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/rhizome.jpg
yes, the amphibians are some of the best parts of that movie.. i also like the scene with the cajun music and the soul-is-still-dancing where nic cage is going “crazy” e.g. recessing completely into his vision of the world around him instead of trying to agree with general visions
a virus in the official story
Seconds on the dancing soul scene. But my favorite was the scene at the pharmacy.
I didn’t understand the rhizome reference. Sorry.
I think we actually did talk abt camels in one of my history classes somewhere along the way, high school, but not abt the southeast… I think it was abt why camels weren’t used in the Southwest, where there were deserts, and I remember my teacher saying camels’ feet are not suited for rocky deserts like the ones here, only sandy deserts like the ones there, but that folks had tried it anyway and some camels’ feet got tore up.
All sounds to me like material for a Jim Shepard story.
If only we could harness a critical load of curious historical episodes into the baddest story collection ever to be set in print.
The alligators on leashes thing made me think of (the recent) Bad Lieutenant, where the perspective at points is that of New Orleans’ reptilian inhabitants. As if Werner Herzog is asking a similar question to this post, inviting alternate histories.
Alligators have the funniest little legs, but boy can they motor – vroooom catch that chihuahua/ injin!
sometimes people like to talk about philosophical rhizomes whenever anyone is enthusiastic about messes; botanical rhizomes are actually pretty terrific: http://candidcandidacy.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/rhizome.jpg
yes, the amphibians are some of the best parts of that movie.. i also like the scene with the cajun music and the soul-is-still-dancing where nic cage is going “crazy” e.g. recessing completely into his vision of the world around him instead of trying to agree with general visions
a virus in the official story
YES ZZZZIPP IS CANADIAN D (AS MUCH AS ZZZZIPP IS BOUND BY NATIONAL BORDERS).
Seconds on the dancing soul scene. But my favorite was the scene at the pharmacy.
I think we actually did talk abt camels in one of my history classes somewhere along the way, high school, but not abt the southeast… I think it was abt why camels weren’t used in the Southwest, where there were deserts, and I remember my teacher saying camels’ feet are not suited for rocky deserts like the ones here, only sandy deserts like the ones there, but that folks had tried it anyway and some camels’ feet got tore up.
All sounds to me like material for a Jim Shepard story.
YES ZZZZIPP IS CANADIAN D (AS MUCH AS ZZZZIPP IS BOUND BY NATIONAL BORDERS).
That’s exactly what I thought too (re: Shepard).
That’s exactly what I thought too (re: Shepard).
soc.history.what-if
Wow, Usenet is like Troy. You just keep building new cities atop the old & the wise people search for the lost city, without realizing they live atop it.
History _is_ story. It is constructed w/ narrative. I’m surprised it’s not the first place a writer goes to for inspiration.
soc.history.what-if
Wow, Usenet is like Troy. You just keep building new cities atop the old & the wise people search for the lost city, without realizing they live atop it.
History _is_ story. It is constructed w/ narrative. I’m surprised it’s not the first place a writer goes to for inspiration.