Increasingly, my lists carry mail from people who (I’d have thought) ought to know better than to quote the entire thread so far. (The rot seems less advanced in Usenet – perhaps because only old fogies post to Usenet.)
Also increasing: users who don’t apply the customary signs of quotation from a previous message.
Leaving the house today, I heard a neighbor mention to a visitor that he had taken Russian in hi-skool. “So did I!” said I.
So he asked: “Kogdá idú?”
I remember just enough to know that this means When am I going?
(I assume he meant “Kudá idëš?”)
Joe Fuhrig – golfer, economist, teacher, swell guy – died suddenly on March 3. His ashes were scattered furtively on a golf course. At the memorial service today, his family may have been taken aback at the size of the crowd.
Achille Talon: Le Roi des Zôtres
ZOTRTRUPPEN! Mitt eine grosse Köningsdeklaraverdung, ich kanonnert vertradukverlang: Grenadiersoldaat Prumpf nicht mehr mit militär obligazionen verankikineerd ist, und Kolonel der zpezial personnäl Achille I.er Royalenkommando vernommert immediääterdung ist und vier semänen kongépayé kan mitt der familie verpasseren . .
Und ein oder minuskuul verdetail: ich, Major Achtungfeuer, vergenomminazionnert Traduktoren-oberzumfuhrerkaporal bin perzonnaliktisch by der Köning. LEBE ACHILLE! LEBE ZOTRLAND!
Yesterday I picked up a remainder copy of Rock Names from ABBA to ZZ Top: How Rock Bands Got Their Names, by Adam Dolgins. Looking through such a reference, naturally one thinks about what to call one’s own hypothetical band; and I thought up The Baroques. (Or maybe Baroke Blokes? There’s already a band named Barolk Folk.)
I can see the cover: the band dressed in Louis XIV style, with huge curly wigs (but in bright colors), banging away on chrome pipe organ and electric mandolin . .
On the front cover of the second album, one of the players, in the same 18c duds but now frayed, stands hitchhiking, showing the title Flat Baroque on a cardboard sign; on the back the others burn instruments in a kettledrum.
Later: Shoulda looked it up. Les Baroques were a Dutch band 1965-9. Flat Baroque is both an instrumental by Richard Carpenter and a blues label; Flat Baroque and Berserk is an album by Roy Harper.
Peter Stickney writes in alt.peeves:
Voice recognition will not be mature until a system can transcribe “Life is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me)” with 95% accuracy, in real time.
Also found in the archives, whom to blame.