Besides, if you're going to die horribly, you might as well do it with style.

Hippo in a skirt: this was a comic reference to one of Solomon's principal wives, the one from Moab. Childish? Yes. But in the days before printing we had limited opportunities for satire.

Can you define "plan" as "a loose sequence of manifestly inadequate observations and conjectures, held together by panic, indecision, and ignorance"? If so, it was a very good plan.

We communicated with pithy, rather monosyllabic thoughts: viz. Run, Jump, Where? Left, Up, Duck, ect. (This latter was an observation I made on the edge of a lake. Nathaniel unfortunately took it as a command, which resulted in our temporary immersion.) We didn't ever quite say Ug, but it was a close-run thing.

What is a gathering without unseemly drunkenness?

He was transfixed at the sight of the lords and ladies of his realm running about like demented chickens.

That's a gesture of endearment in some cultures. Some hug, some kiss, some set each other on fire in small patches of woodland