Fabulous Beasts #6 Rodan

Rodan is a mutated pterosaur. His name was originally pronounced ラドン , or Radon --like the unfabulous, vaporous, beast that gets into some cellars and makes everybody sick-- and he worked for Toho Studios in Japan. His Japanese name, Radon, is a contraction of pteRAnoDON. But when his name is written in English in Japan, it is written as Rodan. In  America, where my brother, Frank, and I went to see him in a movie in 1957, his name was pronounced:

However, in French, although his name is pronounced Ro-dan, it is written "Rodin".

I don't remember much of the movie. It might have been about Rodan trying to get downtown for art supplies. He was larger than many cities, which made for difficulties in everyday activities, and caused much speculation in the arts community. They wondered how a gigantic flying reptile could do such fine work in bronze, like this:

But we must consider the evolution of this outdoor sculpture. It is heavily influenced by Michelangelo's statue of Lorenzo Di Medici,

which is recessed into a Florentine alcove, a kind of box.There is a compelling body of historical argument maintaining they were the same sculptor who, in later life and advanced mutation, expressed the importance of not only thinking but also thinking outside the box.

My research has just now raised another aspect of controversy. There was, it seems, a French sculptor named Rodin, who looked like this:

And, as I delve further into the enigma, I find this man, Rodin, and Rodan often got each others' mail.

This leaves the Medicis. They had a reputation for cleverness that long outlived them. Could  they have created a subterfuge of such duration? Clearly, any calculations conducted above Florentine radon have little relevance to modern politics. So I must conclude this essay with a cautionary moral: If you are tempted to affect the future specifically, remember, although the days of reward seem limitless, the days of the calendar are by definition numbered --an imbecility, I know, but it gives onto a future post about the Mayan Long Count, which I'm sure will encourage us to think outside the box as soon as I read up on what it is.