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

>> As for squigglejwfsquiggle...I can only say... <<

Oh you could have said more.
Happily, good sense and judgement prevailed and we'll all thank 'e f'r it eternally if somewhat internally. Else we'd have all descended into a raging and hurtful debate on whether the seemingly incongruous sci-fi scenes in Slaughterhouse Five were the inspiration for HHGTTG.

And then I would have had to admit that 'that' was the one good novel he had in him and someone else had to write it. I will not let the occassion go however without observing my pleasure at discovering your 'love' for the American language. So it goeth.

~jwf~

Footnote: An excerpt from the argument you won't be getting from me on how the treasure trove of Kilgore Trout's fine sci-fi short stories was cut short by the success of Slaughterhouse Five:
"...the protagonist of the novel believes he has “come unstuck in time.” He walks through a door at one moment in his life and suddenly finds himself in another time and place. His fragmented experience of time structures the novel as short episodic vignettes and shows how the difficulty of recounting traumatic experiences (such as the Dresden firestorm) can require unusual literary techniques."

>> ...clapping between movements is an interesting one. I think it was Wagner ...scared into the silence "that the music deserved". Wa**er. <<

I say Guh-nomon, that posting works on several levels.

But it was the asterisks in Wagner/Wa**er that had me laughing out loud and looking round to see if any Wa**ers were scowling in my direction.

I tend to applaud (anything) only when and if I feel it is deserved. Sometimes right in the middle of a movement. Music seldom inspires silence. A hush perhaps, and rarely a breathless hush. On the other hand and on the whole I'm afraid most Wa**ers would misinterpret most of my silences. Very few of them are breathless hushes.

~jwf~

Anna Tayma, presumably. Thse silly shibboleths were well nailed by Stephen Fry's pronunciation of 'Vene...........................tsia' and 'Firen..........................tsay' - A pretentious over-doing of the Italian elongation of double consonants. Except that 'Venezia' and 'Firenze' don't even have double consonants.

CIA-oh!

If there's anything worse than a pretentious English accent cutting the air in Venice I haven't heard it yet...oh yes, perhaps like the long American feminine whine or the even sehr pretentious Hochdeutsch tischtennisball in Mund accent (sounds like the Queen talking underwater) I guess like. We all have our faults. Except the Italians who speak like Verdi Bellini and Rossini - Bello, bello!

"I only know two words, Bella and...er...Bella"
(Gregory in 'Gregory's Girl')

("Jesu Bambino! That's really nifty.")

We should have been pronouncing the t in Pinochet as it's a spanish name. How come we franglicised him? ...though franglicising was far too good for him in my book.

Caught an old episode of Silent Witness on the box last night and it struck me what an odd word autopsy was.

Self-sight? Really?

It's also a word which isn't used in British police/forensic/medical work. Here, it's 'post mortem'. And British judges don't have gavels either.

Self-examination: One of my favourite words is 'omkephaloskepsis'. Unfortunately, I don't think it's in the most popular dictionaries.

From the Online Etymology Dictionary:

Autopsy
1651, "an eye-witnessing," from Mod.L. autopsia, from Gk. autopsia "seeing with one's own eyes," from autos- "self" (comb. form) + opsis "a sight" (see eye). Sense of "dissection of a body to determine cause of death" is first recorded 1678.

...

But do British Judges waggle their wigs?

Ed,

did you mean 'OMPHALOSKEPSIS' ?
Only I couldn;t find your word at all in google.

Found the above though which is defined at
http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-omp1.htm

I did like where it says
"seems to be a word that survives more for the chance to show off one’s erudition than as a real aid to communication"

You're quite right. The extraneous -ke- was poor typing, not lack of erudition.

And, yes, I'm a show-off. But I do like the word.

Another one - we've had this one before - which also isn't in the smaller dictionaries, but which I find indispensable is 'steatopygious'.

Come to think of it...we could combine the two. I often catch myself being steatopygioskeptic. I'm something of a steatopygiomane.

'Steatopygious'

Cool? Yeah, butt not indispensible. I wouldn't feel an ass if I didn't know what it meant.

squigglejwfsquiggle:
>>the treasure trove of Kilgore Trout's fine sci-fi short stories was cut short by the success of Slaughterhouse Five

Clearly you've not read 'Breakfast of Champions'. Nor 'Timequake'.

Trivia: A couple of years ago, Vonnegut announced Trout's suicide. He could no longer bear to live in a country governed by Bush and Cheney.

But, yes, American language. It is popular sport for the British to bemoan the vulgarities of American English. I take every opportunity to leap upon such fools and remind them of which nation was responsible for the overwhelming bulk of the great literature, poetry, drama and cinema of the past 100-odd years. We've practically nothing to compare.

>>I wouldn't feel an ass if I didn't know what it meant.

oof.

Go to the bottom of the class.

'omkephaloskepsis' could be broken down as om-kephalo-skepsis which sounds suspiciously like disbelieve in the head of Om. Well, I don't believe in it.

The fever hasn't subsided yet, then.

<>

See, that's a matter of opinion... speaking for myself, I'd say you're confusing 'great' with 'expensive and successful'.

"steatopygious"

that'd be "steatopygous" then (sorry, only doing it 'cos it's you Ed and were talking about slightly unusual words)

>>
See, that's a matter of opinion... speaking for myself, I'd say you're confusing 'great' with 'expensive and successful'.

OK...I'll call you on that. Baldwin. Faulkner. Steinbeck. Bellow. Roth. Pynchon. Salinger. Morrison. Angelou. Dos Passos. Ellison. Bradbury. Steinbeck. Vonnegut. Hammet. Chandler. Elroy. Carver. Sinclair. Ford. Frost. Hughes. Ginsberg. Ferlinghetti. Corso. Mamet. O'Neill. Williams. Albee. Miller....do let me know when I should stop...