Sunday, November 4, 2007

Ridiculous Library of Congress Subject Headings: Week of November 5, 2007

Every once in a while, I come across something that should be a subject heading in the Library of Congress. Two cities in the United States (Angels Camp, California and Jefferson, Oregon) claim to be "Frog-Jumping Capital of the World," while Valley City claims to be the "Frog-Jumping Capital of Ohio." Old Mill Village, Pennsylvania holds an annual frog-jumping competition as well. In terms of monographs, there is a short story called the "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" by Mark Twain and a children's book called "Jump, Frog, Jump" by Robert Kalan (that has received 5-star reviews on Amazon!) Yet the Library of Congress fails to recognize the activity as worthy of classification. Seems to me we should be cataloging and preserving this important piece of our American heritage.

An important distinction: Frog-jumping competitions generally measure jumping distances of amphibians. However, a frog-jump is also a human endeavor recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records - where a person holds his or her big toes while jumping. The current record for human frog-jumping is 10 meters in 9.5 seconds.
  • Swimming - Kick
  • Nursing - Pictorial Works
  • Sport Utility Vehicles - Crashworthiness
  • Peat bogs - Statistical methods
  • Hunting dogs in art
  • Strap-on sex
  • Buddy films
  • Male pregnancy

Other things to be concerned about this week: November initiatives and robot frogs. Rock the vote and put a stop to frog-bots.

1 comment:

The Chuckman said...

Frogbots are just misunderstood, just imagine all the time that we could free up for hard working American's if the menial labor done by carbon based frogs could be streamlined and done none-stop by superior robo-frogs. I've seen the future my friend, and it's Frogbots.

On a side note I'd like to give a shout out to "Jamie's Beard" a friend who left us tragically too soon. In his memory I offer 1 oz of "one for the homies."