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

Shatner is a curse word? That's the first I've ever heard tell of it.

Poor William.

Read his autobio and buy a shirt from Wil Wheaton.
They say 'HELLO, I'm William F*****g Shatner!'
Have you ever seen 'Galaxyquest'?

Okay, so our evil pizza plot isn't working. What about your invasion (on a trial basis) of Pleaston CA by an unholy alliance of Safeway food stores and Tesco, in the form of another try at online grocery shopping? Huh, what about that, you older and wiser imperialists, you!

SC

Didn't someone have an album with that name - van Halen or Guns'n'Roses? I heard that the 'f' word came from the Dutch word 'fokken', to strike. I could be wrong, but.

Tonsil, my brother has all the TRB albums, some on CD, mine are vinyl, so I haven't heard them for a while... We loved TRB in 1981, and all sorts of things like the Rocky Horror show movie, Radio Hauraki, and all sorts of things.Those Were the Excellent Days, my friend!

Van Hagar.
I remember the days when I could go to the cut-out bins and find albums that I wanted to buy just for the covers. But with CDs, the older I get, the smaller the print gets.

I was listening to an internet station ostensibly from London last night and they were playing retro punk !~! and a lot of urban British 'rap' with the word s**t in it...every other song...
I liked TRB because he sang about things I didn't know anything about.
In a memorable way. And he didn't seem like a music hall act like
the Clash or the Stranglers or Bebop Deluxe or Mink Deville...

I still listen to a 'Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes' tape that I have from '77. It gets thinner every time I copy it, but hey! I just found there website.

So, if they're going to do 'retro' why don't they retro something you can sing along with? Even the Ramones had songs you could sing to your dog.

Tonsil Revenge - can you remember what the station was called? I'm based in Glasgow, but can probably listen to the station via Real Player :P

(Aside to Lentilla...the word I used that got ed was a variant of the word bug. And yes - I found out after I used it (it means something akin to "critter" or "small annoying inset" when used in America)what it refers to in UK slang! So what I said was "that ornery little critter" only I used the word b****r and was ed.)

I'm trying to find it. Zagreb. My memory is not helping.

How rude the act that a word describes and how offensive or taboo the word is are not related though. Look at the words "Charlie" or "Berk" - both rhyming slang with the same root - Charles Hunt / Berkshire Hunt. So next time your grandmother describes you a a proper Charlie, you'll have to wash her mouth out.

F**k isn't an acronym. It's a very old word but of ultimately unknown derivation. It's been in spoken circulation in English for several hundred years. Shakespear spelt it 'Firk'. I like to think that it might be onomatapeaic.

Zagreb, it's called 'London Unlimited' it's on my Explorer 'The Rock Channel'

Equally the terrifically rude word "Quim" comes entemologically from a scots word meaning "a beautiful glade", which is certainly one of the finer ideas of a woman's genitalia. Lenny Bruce has of course covered a huge chunk of these matters in his routines. A truely funy, and great American.

Warning: What follows is sarcasm.

Ah, now we have an idea of what you consider a 'truly great American'.

Warning: That was sarcasm.

I just heard recently that f**k was derived from the German, to strike - but the source was humorous, and therefore probably unreliable.

Truely Great Americans:

Eugine Debbs
Lenny Bruce
Martha Gellhorn
Kurt Vonnegut
Woody Allen
Sylvia Plath
William Burroughs
Billie Holiday
Woody Guthrie

None of them perfect (god forbid) but talented, interesting, accute, articulate and great.

And they can all probibly spell better than me too.

You forgot
W.E.B. Dubois
Booker T. Washington
Langston Hughes
Gwendolyn Brooks
Gregory Corso
Harlan Ellison
Emma Goldman
Margaret Sanger
Frank Zappa
Nat King Cole
Paul Robeson
Sacajawea
Abigail Adams

...and a truly great Canadian,

William Farging Shatner

Emma Goldman was Russian.

Yes, but while she was in the U.S., she had a big influence. And since it is a nation of immigrants...
I mean Isaac Asimov was not born in the U.S.
Nor Henry Kissinger...yet we think of them as Americans.
Where was Emma born? Goldman doesn't seem like a russian name to me. Sounds more...Ah, that was her married name. Wonder what happened to Mr.?

.....and let´s have it for another great american,


Hunter S. Thompson