<WBP: Shagspere or Wharfinger?> Not sure what this will cost me (not quite sure what we're dealing with here), but <Wharfinger>. (Just watched <Goldfinger> the other night for the umpteenth-million time. Interesting thing: the Bond films--and all the clones thereafter--usuually sell themselves with all the usual goodies: fast cars, beautiful women, and exotic locations. <Goldfinger> has the first two, but locations? Yeah, whenever I watch that movie, I want to book the next plane to Fort Knox.)

Hi <Mack> Thanks for the Carlyle stuff. I totally agree. And Carlyle's influence on other writers--notably Melville--is not really appreciated enough.

(BTW: I am a gun collecter and occasionally do shoot dry rubbish, though that's all!)

Unless, about 50 years ago, they filmed a special edition for the young Prince Charles, with <Flowerpet Men>, designed to teach him the language of the plants. Which, it is said, he still speaks fluently, especially Tomatoese.

William Shagspere, an actor from Stratford, wrote some messy comedies and a couple of history plays, before creating the complex character Falstaff in Henry IV. He then began work on a tragedy ('Othello: Holy War in Venice'), but before completing it he was served with a fatwa and stabbed to death in Deptford. Some critics say that, if he'd lived, Shagspere might have been almost as good as Marlowe.

I referred to the (plural) Koreas, to suggest that the folks up north might have a technology to read mail of a Canadian alien who just landed on the lower peninsula.

Their gear would be more sophisticated than CG's dirty-word finder.

Jess's use of "communist" four times in a post was typical fun stuff for the lady. But it was gratuitous, n'est pas?

I should write on the blackboard fifty times: "Subtlety does not work."

Paranoijoe

Also, they don't bother running searches on the word 'communist' anymore -- it's only of academic interest. What they like to hear is next month's code words, and I'm not about to give those away... (but take care if talking about polar bears and arctic circles... risky topic right now...

<Cool the wisecracks -- until you know the territory.> A tough request, that's for sure, and you know this already. But just indulge an old fart who cares.

I feel better now.

Since you're legally blind, however, they may simply use a SWAT team.

(It's true, btw, that it sometimes comes as a shock to North Americans to find themselves in a part of the world containing (a) communists, and (b) people who shoot communists; and the 'friendly' crossfire is no respecter of passports. But I reckon our Jessica is up to the challenge...)

I don't think I ever SAW a gun until I was about 18, and even then it was being pointed at me by a VOPO in East Germany.

Alas, my German wasn't good enough to say "Excuse me, Bitte, Meinherr, I collect guns, could I please take yours to paste in my gun album? Is there a charge?"

Back in the era when a German border guard pointed his GUN at me, I'd just come from Ireland ... a place where, to go by the world's media, there was some kind of 'war' on.

<Whenever children are being loud or generally misbehaving in a restaurant or any other public place, you'll hear the Irish parents scaring their children by pointing to the waiter/park keeper/whoever and saying, 'Here comes The Man! You've made The Man angry!'>

As for <The Man>, I prefer Pynchon (of course):

<"We are all powerless in the massive presence of Money ... The Man has a branch office in each of our souls, and his mission in this world is Bad @#$%.">

That's a misquote-from-memory: I just tried to look up the original, and couldn't find it. When I can't locate a line in Gravity's Rainbow, it's a sure sign that Larry Alzheimer is on my case.

On the plus side, I peeked into a thesis on Pynchon by that McCarthy person ('The Critical Zone', 1982) and found a theory about two types of structure, the moire and the chessboard.

"We move through a cosmic design of darkness and light, and in all humility I am one of the very few who can comprehend it in toto. Consider honestly therefore, young man, which side you would rather be on."

- Gerhard von Goll, aka Der Springer, in Gravity's Rainbow

"Chess is a highly structured exercise which may also serve as a mode of perception and a metaphor for life."

"A moire, on its own, is undifferentiated, integrated, and chaotic: it is the observer who plucks it to pieces to find the structures it conceals. ... Our perceptual paranoia, engulfed in a rage to order, transforms caries into cabals, sees chessboards where there is only moire."

- G. McCarthy, The Critical Zone

[I'll see what else if anything this source can throw up for your anthology... good thing I haven't written *much* about chess or you could be bombarded with inane verbosities...]

I saw a child acting up on Stroget once. Must have been Swedish. Not a pretty sight.

The *other* 50% of niecedom more than makes up for all this unnatural goodness. Although the Danish one is currently in my good books (she said that I make her think) while the Irish one has reached the poke-him-with-a-sharp-stick and-giggle-inanely phase.

When I moved here (New Mexico) from Chicago when I was 13 (1969), I moved right into a rural gun culture. All my high school friends had guns (it is a rather rural and remote area of the state) and not much was really made of it. I soon acquired a small caliber rifle. Most of my adult life I didn't have any (illegal in New York), but on moving back here, I began collecting.