Someone asked me recently the why and wherefore of my tagline. Not the ramble, rant, rave part, but the "better, even, than eating buffalo tongue". Well, I'll tell you where it came from.

I'm currently in the middle of a book called Favorite Folktales from Around the World and in it is a story called "How Men and Women Got Together," an American Indian (Blood-Piegan) tale. And it's the story of ... well, of how men and women got together.

In this story, Old Man had made the world and everything in it, and "he had done everything well, except that he put the men in one place and the women in another, quite a distance away." Things were fine this way for a while, with each group learning to live well, until Old Man thought to himself, "Men and women are different from each other, and these different things must be made to unite so that there will be more people. I must make men mate with women. I will put some pleasure, some good feeling into it; otherwise the men won't be keen to do what is necessary."

So the story goes on, of the men finding that the women lived much better than they did, and the women finding that the men were better hunters than they were, but at each encounter, each found the other at an inconvenient time or made a bad impression, and it never worked out. Finally, each makes a final effort to impress the other and it works. Old Man and the woman chief go off to talk about getting together and this is what happened:

"Let's try one thing that has never been tried before," he said to the woman chief.
"I always like to try out new, useful things," she answered.
"Maybe one should lie down, trying this," said Old Man.
"Maybe one should," agreed the woman chief. They lay down.
After a while Old Man said, "This is surely the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me. I couldn't ever imagine such a wonderful thing."
"And I," said the woman chief, "I never dreamed I could feel so good. This is much better, even, than eating buffalo tongues. It's too good to be properly described."

So yeah. It is perhaps a bit presumptous to assume that my rambling, ranting and raving is better, even, than eating buffalo tongues, but you're still reading, so I guess it's worth something, right??