h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

" At 67, the small-motor functions (note the hyphen!) are not what they used to be."

How old is the rest of you?

As old as the small-motor functions, I suppose.

That's one way to read that sentence, although I also think it is possible that I am employing an obscure Ciceronian technique that has a Latin name I've forgotten.

You're good, Dmitri

Bringing in Cicero off the top of your head is a sure way to get me to ease off. Yes, the Latin language has the famous "non sequitur," a passive form which probably means "is not followed by."

(I confess that the phrase in question distracted me from actually reading the text of the article. )

I suggest that you are too easily distracted.

I call this the 'bird outside the window' effect. Years ago, I was trying to help a five-year-old boy learn to read. He didn't want to. I was trying to get him to play what I thought was a fun game with giant interlocking foam tiles: we'd make 'cat', then I'd change the 'c' for an 'm', etc. Just when I thought he was about to get the hang of it, he'd change the subject by saying something like 'There's a bird outside the window.'

I've gotten halfway through the article. I noticed this:

"I attribute my subversive attitudes largely to my Cold War television viewing experiences."

What I learned from 1950s television was that Boris and Natasha were the best enemies a good country like ours could have. Boris couldn't even pronounce "Natasha" right. Yes, I have a collection of Rocky & Bullwinkle videos somewhere, why do you ask?

'Rocky and Bullwinkle' didn't go on the air until 1959, so I think of them as 1960s entertainment.

I remember some really *old* television. Things like 'I Led Three Lives'. Here is a particularly awful episode written by Gene Roddenberry. It's one of Tavaron's favourites because of its 'safe-handling' practices when you have radioactive materials in your living room.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0DW_qpilRQ

"Rocky and Bullwinkle" is in keeping with your memories of your aunt, though. It was aired on Sunday afternoons, and when I was at my grandmother's apartment at that time, I begged her to let me watch it on her TV.

Or maybe I "bugged" her. Same difference.

Early TV shows? I remember "Ding Dong School," "My Little Margie," and ""Mister peepers."

I've already managed to move the topic from the original. Sorry! In my defense, I have to say that when I ran a book discussion group, I let the participants wander off-topic, because I was confident that I could link whatever they were discussing with the original topic. I guess I was following Dirk Gently's approach. The universe is infinitely connected, so you will always reach your destination no matter what roads you take.

That's a perfectly fine thing to do, I think.

Did your grandmother like 'Rocky and Bullwinkle'? Mine enjoyed 'studio wrestling'. I'm not kidding.

I had the best kind of grandmother . She died more than forty years ago, but I still miss her. I miss my mother, too. It's funny how much I appreciate people after they're gone. Did they realize how fond I was of them?

I'll bet they did. And I know what you mean about missing people.

The other day, I got an old gospel hymnbook I'd ordered online. I sat down and played through it. And I could hear my grandmother's old beat-up piano (that worked as a player piano if you threw the switch), and heard my aunt and uncles singing 'No Tears in Heaven' and 'Just a Little Talk with Jesus'.

I swear it got warmer in the room. Because it was always summer when this happened, and it was always hot and humid.