From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V11 #238 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Thursday, July 25 2002 Volume 11 : Number 238 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Toronto Review [Stewart Russell ] Re: What are fegs watching? [Eleanore Adams ] Re: What are fegs watching? ["FS Thomas" ] Re: NextDoorLand cover. ["Brian Hoare" ] Re: NextDoorLand cover. [Stewart Russell ] darkness is the right hand of light ["Natalie Jane" ] Re: this post has been sponsored by... [The Great Quail ] Re: NextDoorLand cover. [Tom Clark ] Re: this post has been sponsored by... [Aaron Mandel ] Re: this post has been sponsored by... [gSs ] cable ["ross taylor" ] Re: classic sci-fi with the yellow spines [Stewart Russell ] Re: this post has been sponsored by... [Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey ] Re: this post has been sponsored by... [Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey ] Re: this post has been sponsored by... [Stewart Russell ] Re: classic sci-fi with the yellow spines [JH3 ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 11:26:57 -0400 From: Stewart Russell Subject: Re: Toronto Review Caroline Smith wrote: > > Oh yes, there were sitting/standing right in front of me. One of them only > filmed about 10 minutes of the show. But the other guy got the whole thing, > I think. the dude with the plaster cast, you mean? > Which makes me think, Stewart, that we were practically sitting side-by-side > at the front section of the seated bar area? the camera people were on the right, we were on a thin strip of barstools just outside the seated area, on the left. Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 08:37:55 -0700 From: Eleanore Adams Subject: Re: What are fegs watching? Good Eats on food network. Funny science guy doing recipies and breaking them down so you know why they do/don't work bcs of chemistrystuff. Law and Order reruns on TNT and A&E and that is about it.... e On Thursday, July 25, 2002, at 08:26 AM, Ken Weingold wrote: > On Wed, Jul 24, 2002, Tom Clark wrote: >> Kay, who just got cable, asks: >>> Any suggestions for what I might enjoy on all these new channels? >> >> I'll go first: >> >> Breaking News, Bravo >> Travel Sick, Comedy Central >> Insomniac, Comedy Central >> The Daily Show, Comedy Central >> South Park, Comedy Central >> Junkyard Wars, The Learning Channel >> Rebecca's Vegetarian Table, PBS You >> Later with Jools Holland, BBC America >> Father Ted, BBC America >> Brooklyn Cyclones Baseball, MSG Network > > VH1 Classic is a lot of fun. Kind of early '80s MTV. I also like the > Speed Channel a lot, but it's not as good as when it was Speedvision. > Too much fucking Nascar. If I want to see a bunch of rednecks driving > around in a circle, I will turn on TNN or any of the other 10,000 > channels showing it. > > > -Ken ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 11:37:40 -0400 From: "FS Thomas" Subject: Re: What are fegs watching? - ----- Original Message ----- Subject: Re: What are fegs watching? The Wire on HBO > The Daily Show, Comedy Central I caught that for the first time in ages last night. Very novel. > Later with Jools Holland, BBC America Occasional flares of excellence surround by chum bucket rejects. (I've got to admit that probably what turns me off most about the show is the format.) > Father Ted, BBC America Eh...I could think of other Brit shows I would rather see. The old priest scares the crap out of me and I'm not even a practicing Christian. - -ferris. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 15:42:49 +0000 From: "Brian Hoare" Subject: Re: NextDoorLand cover. >From: Brian > > >What's going on here anyway? Is there someone on the bed? Can't tell. > That'd be Lal's scupture "Tea In Bed". For a better view. http://www.axisartists.org.uk/all/ref5749.htm I saw this site earlier this year and was the sculpture I'd have liked if a: I had that much money to spend on art and b: If had somewhere to put the thing where it wouldn't get damaged. Brian _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 11:52:14 -0400 From: Stewart Russell Subject: Re: NextDoorLand cover. Brian Hoare wrote: > > That'd be Lal's scupture "Tea In Bed". For a better view. you've got to like someone who lists "Blue Peter" as an influence. Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 09:04:32 -0700 From: "Natalie Jane" Subject: darkness is the right hand of light >I was pretty disappointed with The Left Hand of Darkness >when I read it for my Alien Sex class in college. It >makes sense to me, I guess, but I had been hoping for a >more colorful, additive androgyny. Le Guin has been roundly criticised for this, by Stanislaw Lem among others; since she uses the pronoun "he," the androgynes just come off as... well, men. She's admitted her error in an essay called "Is Gender Necessary?" - regretting, among other things, that she never depicted Estraven with his/her children. She's tried using "she" and a made-up set of pronouns, to better effect. But I'm planning >to try a couple of Samuel Delanys soon, namely Nova, >Triton, and/or Dhalgren. Dhalgren's a massive slog - be prepared to be mired in that for a good long time, even if you're a fast reader. It's worth reading, though. >Thinking of Being John Malkovich, what about Spike Jonze? He would do a good "Ubik," maybe. He'd do a great job on those goofy Ubik ads at the beginning of every chapter. "Use only as directed." >It appalls me the extent that >ads, formerly something the advertiser had to pay for, are now >largely >subsidized by a moronic public running around in clothing >(say) that >blazons its brandname in gigantic letters. Oh god, what IS it with that??? I don't understand! (Even though I too own band T-shirts, my WCBN T-shirt, etc. But those are things I enjoy. Do people enjoy Tommy Hilfiger? "Brand loyalty" confuses me.) >I would like GAP a whole lot better if their clothes weren't made by >sweatshop slaves. Yeah, me too, hence my guilt. I'm wearing a pair of Gap pants right now (thrift store purchase, admittedly, but still...). Oh, so has anyone seen "Road to Perdition"? I can tolerate Hanks slightly better than Cruise. It sounds pretty good - but a movie based on a comic based on a comic strikes me as overly meta. I'm wondering when they're going to start making remakes of remakes. Like, in a few years maybe we'll have a new Scooby Doo remake film that isn't based on the cartoon, it's based on the film that came out this year. I can seriously see it happening. n. (now imagining Tom Hanks as Ged and shuddering) _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 11:07:31 -0500 (CDT) From: gSs Subject: Re: What are fegs watching? On Thu, 25 Jul 2002, FS Thomas wrote: > Eh...I could think of other Brit shows I would rather see. The old priest > scares the crap out of me and I'm not even a practicing Christian. father ted wore into me. it didn't like it at first and still don't, really, but it comes on right after fools and horses at 1:30am on monday and i'm like, 'what the fuck, another half hour ain't gonna kill me.' the jokes on f.t. are sometimes good, it's just a bit farcical. fools and horses, that is a kickin comedy. they started showing people like us and singles recently and both of those are a gas. mulberry is good too. they started showing that again on kera but last saturday night i was watching during it's understood time slot and they showed something else. gSs ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 12:10:12 -0400 From: The Great Quail Subject: Re: this post has been sponsored by... Gnat aims her blowgun, > It would have been > perfectly possible to make up plausible, realistic fake products. It would > make the future seem far more like THE FUTURE than simply a slight variant > on the present. We'll have to agree to disagree here. I think that corporate entrenchment is here to stay for a while, so I *believe* more in a future GAP than I do a future "Quail Clothes." (Or, uh, something.) Spielberg is just following in the footsteps of Stanley Kubrick's "accuracy" and William Gibson's fetishization of brand. I mean, of course there are occasional upheavals and surprises -- Kubrick could not have known Pan-Am would go out of business by 2001 -- but it seems more realistic to accept that major chains are going to still be around in 50 years, especially given the current trends towards globalization and cultural homogeneity. I also feel the same about curse words -- I hate when SF books and shows use fake curse words, TANSTAAFL, Frack, and so on. We humans have been saying "fuck " and "shit" for centuries, and I doubt that's going to change! (And if it does, I am sending Eddie into the future to get things back on track.) > Oh man, I almost puked when I saw that. And what about the poor precogs who > are probably scarred for life? Yeah! I would much rather have seen how Agatha ended up! Another "grace note" I like din MR was when Tom (I think it was him) said, "It's easier if you don't think of them as human." Ugh -- chilling!!!! > Yes, definitely. (Incidentally, I still love you, Quail.) I will always love you, gNat, no matter how many of my sacred cows you gorge! Jeff, > * Like this current one, where the soldier boy is climbing up some snowy > mountain and blabbling about his "army of one"-ness and trying to be the > voice of the military backing out of the obviously psychopathic > intimations of that slogan by emphasizing teamwork...but I'm wondering, > what, is the US thinking it's going to come under attack by Yeti or > something, that climbing frozen mountains is some plausible military > operation? Oh man, don't act like you've never read any Lovecraft! They know, man, the government KNOWS....! - --The Great "Mi-Go" Quail ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 09:53:31 -0700 From: "Jason R. Thornton" Subject: Re: the minority report of heaven At 07:41 PM 7/24/2002 -0500, Gene Hopstetter, Jr. wrote: >>From: "drew" >> >>The art direction and cinematography alone were worth the price of >>admission. > >Heck, it's those two things which got me in the theater to see Spielberg's >last two films in the first place. As far as I'm concerned, a little bit >of decent storytelling is icing on the cake (as far as contemporary >blockbuster films are concerned. Huh. Usually the cinematography is what I dislike MOST about Spielberg films, besides the sappy endings. The cinematography often feels heavy-handed, overdone and distancing, at least for the past decade or so. 'Schindler's List' looked exactly like exactly like one of the numerous black-and-white holocaust documentaries that I saw growing up, and 'Private Ryan' looked like a jittery WWII newsreel. It's almost as if Spielberg is afraid to get to close to a subject, and needs a filmic buffer of sorts, imitations of how HE probably experienced such events (after the fact, through film), rather than something more direct and honest. I'm not sure if this makes him a egotist or a coward. Or both. His films look like movies about movies, rather than movies about the subject in question. 'AI' looked pretty good most of the way through, but the end looked like crap. 'Minority Report' was too washed-out and drab - actually that would be my biggest complaint about the film. It's probably my favorite Spielberg flick, after maybe 'Empire of the Sun.' - --Jason "Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples." - Sherwood Anderson ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 13:21:55 -0400 From: Stewart Russell Subject: Re: this post has been sponsored by... The Great Quail wrote: > > We humans have been saying > "fuck" and "shit" for centuries, and I doubt that's going to change! I dunno; the forms change, the linguistic role of taboo slang doesn't. Shaw's use of "bloody" in Pygmalion caused a riot in London in 1914. Newspapers will print 'fuck' unexpurgated, but I don't know any that will print the c-word in full. I knew an artist who made it his life's work to get the c-word accepted in polite use. Unfortunately, through his frequent use of it, he wasn't, and got beaten up a couple of times for his trouble. At age 11, my friend Neil had a grasp of meta language beyond his age. He used to use the expression "rude words!", leaving the listener to fill in the emotion with the term of their choice. Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 10:30:38 -0700 (PDT) From: "drew" Subject: classic sci-fi with the yellow spines > From: gSs > i think any man who makes his wife wear a burqua should be hung in the > street and left there as an example. What about the women who choose to wear them (and there are a disturbing number of those from what I understand). Maybe the same for them, but it probably wouldn't have the same effect. So lately, probably because I keep thinking about Dick, I have the urge to go to the fabulously huge used bookstore in Mountain View and grab a bunch of cheap classic science fiction novels to read, since there are a lot of classic authors I've never read (and since I read two pages of Delany's _Nova_ last night and despaired of finding the will to continue). Any recommendations? Drew ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 10:56:19 -0700 From: Tom Clark Subject: Re: NextDoorLand cover. on 7/25/02 8:42 AM, Brian Hoare at arrowodd@hotmail.com wrote: >> From: Brian > >> >> What's going on here anyway? Is there someone on the bed? Can't tell. >> > > That'd be Lal's scupture "Tea In Bed". For a better view. > > http://www.axisartists.org.uk/all/ref5749.htm > I love "Tea With Mother". I'm surprised she doesn't list the UM cover in her credits... - -tc ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 14:14:25 -0400 (EDT) From: Aaron Mandel Subject: Re: this post has been sponsored by... On Thu, 25 Jul 2002, The Great Quail wrote: > I mean, of course there are occasional upheavals and surprises -- > Kubrick could not have known Pan-Am would go out of business by 2001 -- > but it seems more realistic to accept that major chains are going to > still be around in 50 years, especially given the current trends towards > globalization and cultural homogeneity. Over the course of 50 years those upheavals add up... some of the giants will survive, and whichever ones they are, people will point to them as evidence that huge companies can survive for arbitrarily long, but that doesn't mean it's going to be 2002 in the mall for the next centure. And to think the *logos* won't change? That's preposterous. I agree with you about invented curse words, though. They're idiotic. a ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 13:18:43 -0500 (CDT) From: gSs Subject: Re: classic sci-fi with the yellow spines On Thu, 25 Jul 2002, drew wrote: > What about the women who choose to wear them (and there are > a disturbing number of those from what I understand). > Maybe the same for them, but it probably wouldn't have the > same effect. These of course being women from societies were things like free thinking, individuality, female judges, clerics and law enforcement officers for example, are common? They are taught and beaten by wicked men whom they cower behind as they wear the burqua like a dog wears a leash. gSs ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 13:21:35 -0500 (CDT) From: gSs Subject: Re: this post has been sponsored by... > I agree with you about invented curse words, though. They're idiotic. aren't all words invented, initially? gSs ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 14:33:00 -0400 From: "ross taylor" Subject: cable My Mom has what is probably a bargain-basement cable package which includes something like a monastic channel where there's always a Monk or Nun talking cheerfully but earnestly to the camera. I think she mostly watches Animal Planet. The commentary on that can be treacly, but those darned animals. There was one a year or two ago about all kinds of animals sharing an African waterhole during a drought. Some fruit that they were all eating was very fermented & some of the beasts were visibly drunk. I'd never seen a really drunk elephant before. If I really can't sleep I sometimes enjoy the shopping channels, particularly if they're doing apparel or exercise machines or vacuum cleaners, something where the host & maybe a model or two have to be completely visible for long stretches. The way they go thru different phases, trying hard to be slick; getting frozen; something engages them & they loosen up again, etc. Or "what can I do to keep my arms looking sexy for the next 300 seconds?" Some of it is feeling smugly superior, some of it is just watching people deal w/ a bizarre kind of job. It stands up well against that exhaustion that won't turn into sleep. Ross Taylor Join 18 million Eudora users by signing up for a free Eudora Web-Mail account at http://www.eudoramail.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 14:46:05 -0400 From: Stewart Russell Subject: Re: classic sci-fi with the yellow spines gSs wrote: > > These of course being women from societies were things like free thinking, > individuality, female judges, clerics and law enforcement officers for > example, are common? c'mon over to Scarborough, Ontario -- we've got all of the above, and burquas too! Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 11:52:57 -0700 From: "Renee Haggart" Subject: Calgary Hi All,Is anyone (besides moi) going to Calgary this weekend? (Sorry if this has been covered, I've been off the list for a year or so) Cheerz,Renee - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. Click Here ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 14:00:16 -0500 (CDT) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: this post has been sponsored by... On Thu, 25 Jul 2002, Stewart Russell wrote: > I dunno; the forms change, the linguistic role of taboo slang doesn't. > Shaw's use of "bloody" in Pygmalion caused a riot in London in 1914. > Newspapers will print 'fuck' unexpurgated, but I don't know any that > will print the c-word in full. > > I knew an artist who made it his life's work to get the c-word accepted > in polite use. Unfortunately, through his frequent use of it, he wasn't, > and got beaten up a couple of times for his trouble. Am I wrong, or are you the Scots expatriate now living in Canada? I ask because I was under the impression that the c-word is more common in Scots English than, say, in the US - particularly when used to mean "stupid worthless person." - --Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html ::I feel that all movies should have things that happen in them:: __TV's Frank__ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 14:04:19 -0500 (CDT) From: gSs Subject: Re: classic sci-fi with the yellow spines On Thu, 25 Jul 2002, Stewart Russell wrote: > c'mon over to Scarborough, Ontario -- we've got all of the above, and > burquas too! and i bet Q runs the place and encourages the female western born and bred judges and clerics to wear demoralizing attire on the bench or behind the pulpit and to except divorce decrees from their faithful, supportive, humble husbands by voice-mail. what a queer method of lucid integrity that would be. kinda like cutting off the head to stop the pain. gSs ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 14:08:17 -0500 (CDT) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: this post has been sponsored by... On Thu, 25 Jul 2002, gSs wrote: > > I agree with you about invented curse words, though. They're idiotic. > > aren't all words invented, initially? Not as such, generally - that is, words do not normally come from someone arbitrarily stringing together phonemes. If anyone here's a linguist, help us out - but words evolve w/in a particular phonetic system characteristic of each language, and new and modified meanings evolve over time (and sometimes change inflection, interestingly: for example, "the batter flied out to left field" not "flew out." And "mice" as plural for the computer mouse still sounds weird to me). New terms, unless they're commercial, generally get borrowed from older linguistic roots; i.e., the scientific tendency to use Latin and Greek roots. And even commercial words, which might begin as brand names, try to make *some* degree of "sense" having to do w/existing connotations within the language. So if you want to make up a new curse word, it won't do just to throw together letters at random, say, "rgavvyq." No way would that ever be a naturally occurring English word. - --Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html ::Watson! Something's afoot...and it's on the end of my leg:: __Hemlock Stones__ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 19:32:13 +0000 From: "Silver Leaf" Subject: On Target Drew: >This is why I shop at Target Lord love a duck, Target is great. You can get attractive, comfortable soft underwire cotton bras for less than 10 bucks on sale. (Since I dont thrift for underwear this is an issue for me(thou perhaps not Drew:-). And I will admit to patronizing the Gap, just not to liking it much. But its ubiquious and therefore all too convenient. And I do love agreeing with Drew! - --------------- Quail on MR: >I did not like the "happy" ending, and I wanted it to be darker. I > also think that Seqor Spielbergo went overboard by showing his wife > pregnant. Oy. I have no problem with happy endings, happy endings are a great good. A decent happy ending requires more artistry to pull off than an unhappy one. Plus the instant cool factor of an easy dark ending makes me often(thou not always) suspect a poseur is at the controls. But why do they turn happy endings into sappy overdrive? They are a triumph of the fragile yet alot of directors beat you over the head with them. Not smart. The endings just end up breaking and the entire movie frails(mispelling spotted but left in anyway.) It would have worked much better for me if you had had a shot of Anderton and wife conversing at the end, and could tell from their body language that there still is love and they are going to make it work. Maybe even cut away as they are starting to reach for each other. With a medium as in your face as film, a pint of suggestion can be worth -more- than a quart of treakle. My inexpert 2 cents. - ------------------ Nat: >Yeah, that's true. And Dick even approved of the film before he >died,though he never got to see the final product. Incidentally, I >found >Dick listed as an "actor" on IMDB, followed the link, and saw he was >actually in a documentary about "Blade Runner" - I would LOVE >to see that!! Someone who reviewed the documentary said he was a raving >maniac. Has anyone seen this? Anyone know what this documentry is called? - ------------------ Ross Taylor >only one more month to worry about how the >remastered Rolling Stones albums will sound Is that whats up? Including the early mono ones that -never- sounded right when pressed as stereo? - ---------------- James: >I reckon a film version of the earthsea books is long overdue. Yes--why has that one been neglected? - --------------- Glenn, three, ah, cheers for telling us about the fart book. I gotta read it. Sebastian, I always thought "Candide" was overrated. Basically a one-joke pony. But then I always found Voltaire alittle too ... french;-) My recent books: Just finished Alan Wall's "School of Night" which I thought Id adore and merely mightely enjoyed, so I shouldnt complain. Ive been looking where I put it cause there is a possible Robyn siting in it. He uses the phrase "the speed of things" at one point. Anyway, quite well done. Theres a bio of one of my favorite lesser-known horror writers out--Mike Ashley's "Algernon Blackwood." Just started it but so far so good. Im also learning about the history of farming in America, so Im skimming "Enduring Seeds, Native American Agriculture and Wild Plant Conservation" by Gary Nahban and "Old Farm Tools and Machinery" by Percy Blandford. So far the best thing is the old pink satin bookmark with a croched red rose apliqued on it I found wedged into "Seeds." I think the book must have last circulated in the 60s. My present gardening book is "Plants for Places"/AHS and I have a reserve on "The Botony of Desire." For bathroom reading there is "The Complete Idiots Guide to Weather" I think thats it. - -------------- Kay _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 15:57:54 -0400 From: Stewart Russell Subject: Re: this post has been sponsored by... Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey wrote: > > Am I wrong, or are you the Scots expatriate now living in Canada? yup. > I ask > because I was under the impression that the c-word is more common in Scots > English than, say, in the US - particularly when used to mean "stupid > worthless person." I suppose it is used commonly, but not amongst polite/mixed company. In particularly colourful usage, it just means person, or "part of the assembled company". Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 16:30:23 -0400 From: The Great Quail Subject: Re: this post has been sponsored by... Jeff writes, > If anyone here's a linguist, help us out - but words evolve w/in a > particular phonetic system characteristic of each language, and new > and modified meanings evolve over time Yes; but it's also helpful to know that many words, particularly nouns, may have onomatopoeic origins. I would assume that buried early in the human linguistic drive is the Edenic desire to match the word with the object it represents: a meld of signifier and signified. Curse words in particular have many different levels to explore, often depending on context. Obviously swear words derived from blasphemy will have different values, lifespans, and cultural effects than words derived from sex or body processes. And let's not forget the basic *sound* of a word: FUCK is such a good curse word because of its texture, the way it *feels* when it is vocalized -- it's very shape has power. It's been around for a while in one form or another, and given the effect of mass media on the collective memory and consciousness of our culture, I would bet it's going to have quite a long run.... - --The Great Fucking Quail ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 16:42:49 -0400 From: Ken Weingold Subject: FYYFF On Thu, Jul 25, 2002, The Great Quail wrote: > Curse words in particular have many different levels to explore, often > depending on context. Obviously swear words derived from blasphemy will have > different values, lifespans, and cultural effects than words derived from > sex or body processes. And let's not forget the basic *sound* of a word: > FUCK is such a good curse word because of its texture, the way it *feels* > when it is vocalized -- it's very shape has power. It's been around for a > while in one form or another, and given the effect of mass media on the > collective memory and consciousness of our culture, I would bet it's going > to have quite a long run.... I agree. Here's a nice little history of the word from dictionary.com: "The obscenity fuck is a very old word and has been considered shocking from the first, though it is seen in print much more often now than in the past. Its first known occurrence, in code because of its unacceptability, is in a poem composed in a mixture of Latin and English sometime before 1500. The poem, which satirizes the Carmelite friars of Cambridge, England, takes its title, "Flen flyys," from the first words of its opening line, "Flen, flyys, and freris," that is, "fleas, flies, and friars." The line that contains fuck reads "Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk." The Latin words "Non sunt in coeli, quia," mean "they [the friars] are not in heaven, since." The code "gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk" is easily broken by simply substituting the preceding letter in the alphabet, keeping in mind differences in the alphabet and in spelling between then and now: i was then used for both i and j; v was used for both u and v; and vv was used for w. This yields "fvccant [a fake Latin form] vvivys of heli." The whole thus reads in translation: "They are not in heaven because they fuck wives of Ely [a town near Cambridge]." - -Fuckin' Ken, god dammit ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 17:38:14 -0500 From: JH3 Subject: Re: classic sci-fi with the yellow spines > So lately, probably because I keep thinking about Dick, I > have the urge to go to the fabulously huge used bookstore > in Mountain View and grab a bunch of cheap classic science > fiction novels to read... This isn't relevant to what you were asking about, but GOOD LUCK finding "cheap" PKD paperbacks! Before all the reprints started appearing a few years ago, some of the older, better- condition ones were going for $25 and up. They're still pretty pricey, AFAIK. Now y'all may or may not believe this, but I read roughly half the PKD "canon" by borrowing first-edition paperbacks, including some original Ace editions worth $100 or more at the time, from the library at the community college I was working at between 1992 and 1995. Somebody had simply donated a roomful of 1950's and 1960's classic sci-fi paperbacks to them all at once, and there they all were, mouldering in a corner! I'm, like, 100% certain nobody there had even the slightest clue as to what they had on their hands. Last time I visited (well over a year ago) they were all still there, too... Oh well, I just felt like I had to tell someone. > ...there are a lot of classic > authors I've never read (and since I read two pages of > Delany's _Nova_ last night and despaired of finding the > will to continue). Any recommendations? I'd recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, as long as you read them in order. (Don't bother with "The Martians.") Sometimes you can find those used. Also, the Suede DVD is pretty good. There are even karaoke versions... John H. ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V11 #238 ********************************