the Beefeater blog

(Originally posted 8/15/2012. Posted again because yesterday, out of nowhere, eight people went to that page. Typically one persons reads it every six or seven months. Who am I to argue against fate or taste or the lack thereof?)

It all started out, as many of the greatest tales so often do, innocently enough. I was sitting in my backyard watching the wind move around the tops of the tall trees. Does it get more wholesome?

As I lay staring at the great outdoors my ears were filled with the sounds of the various woodland inhabitants. In particular the birds… and among the birds one bird in particular. It was loud and it made the same call again and again. Not only was it annoying in its repetitiveness but because I swear the noise it made sounded exactly like “beefeater”. I’m not joking… “beefeater, beefeater, beefeater” again and again. Endlessly. It got me to thinking. Am I hearing this right or is my subconscious trying to tell me that I’m either obsessed with Yeomen Warders or I might be gay. Well I don’t need to go to the Tower of London to know that I’m not gay. But wait… why was a tower the first thing that came to mind?! OK, now I’m getting a little creeped out. So what do I do when I get creeped out?

I turn to Google.

The logical first step was to Google Beefeaters. Are you sitting down? The Beefeaters was the original name of the rock group The Byrds! You see what happening here don’t  you?

The final piece of the puzzle fell firmly in place when I found out that there use to be a British superhero called The Beefeater. Reading about this guy didn’t help. The leggings and porn mustache aside I found out that to defeat evil he uses his Rod of Power. He is called The Beefeater and he wields his Rod to fight crime. Is it just me? (A quick note. To be accurate he really should have wielded a partisan instead of a rod but usually comic books shy away from the hero using anything pointy) So I start to panic… all signs are starting to point in one direction but then I do some more research and find out that this somewhat hapless superhero ended up destroying the Eiffel Tower (did it have to be another tower?) with the aforementioned Rod and never made it into another comic.

There was my answer! It’s common knowledge that I dislike the French so all of this was simply nature’s way of reminding me of that fact. I should have picked it up sooner after remembering (after the fact of course) that the word ‘Beefeater’ comes from the French word buffetier. What superhero would want to be called The Buffetier? I guess the whole concept of a French superhero is sort of an oxymoron anyway. What would his powers be? Surrendering? “We’re being attacked! Someone call The Buffetier… to surrender for us.”

I guess buffetier would also be quite a mouthful for a bird.

Speaking of mouthfuls… there are now female Beefeaters guarding the Tower of London. Why mouthful you ask? Come on! I have to do all the work here? Female Beefeaters… it’s a story that writes itself.