De Thesauro Litterisque Graecis

I've read two great posts over at laudator temporis acti recently, which appeal to my inner (ok, outer) nerd. The first is an Ode to a Thesaurus. Here's the first stanza, as a taste:

O precious codex, volume, tome,
Book, writing, compilation, work
Attend the while I pen a pome,
A jest, a jape, a quip, a quirk.

It reminds me of a non sequitur comic I once saw (and should have kept) entitled 'The Thesaurosaurus'. It showed a dinosaur walking around saying 'I die, expire, am made extinct.' Hilarious.

The second post is on The Noble Shapes of the Greek Letters. Again here's a taste:

Some letters catch the eye more than others: the perverse triple loop of Xi, the twin concavity of Omega, the bisected almond of Theta, Phi like a circle transfixed by a spear, Psi's curly trident and Gamma's two-pronged fork. As the argument kindles and voices wax louder, the lettering matriculates from italics to capitals and out like dangerous missiles whizz triangles and T-squares and gibbets and acute angles, pairs of Stonehenge megaliths with lintel stones, and half-open springs.