As RamseyEss.com historians will one day note, last week’s The Wonderland of Knowledge Wednesday entry was the shortest Wonderland of Knowledge Wednesday entry ever to appear on this site.

When I post an entry from the encyclopedia without much commentary from myself, the next week I try to find one that will allow me to write something more substantial. However, as I flipped through Volume 4 today I found the caption of the following image so hateful that I decided to break this unwritten rule.

Ladies and gentlemen, for your enjoyment: the stupidest thing anyone has ever or ever will be written about a goose.

In case you can not read the caption, click away while you still have the chance.

“The old saw ’silly as a goose’ slanders this gander, who is really clever and courageous.”

Let me get the less obvious one out of the way first: nowhere in the article is there any attempt to back up the “clever and courageous” comment. I may not know a ton about writing reference material, but I have tio imagine that one of the rules is that if you mention a fact you should probably acknowledge it.

More importantly, though, is the rhyme. The horrible, insipid rhyme. Obviously, this encyclopedia has no credibility in 2009, but in 1968 I would imagine that the content of the volumes were acceptable to most readers. That is, until they threw it all away with that rhyme. I hope that nobody made it further than page 380 in Volume 4 because that page can now officially be declared as being soul-destroying. Officially. By me.

On the other hand, at least we all got to see how Gene Shalit’s writing career began.