- I say, Spooner, have you tried Kipling?

Specifically, as far as I recall:

Pruner Skid refers to Spooner's Kid(s), thus progeny etc.

Schooner Spice *almost* works, if you allow the German, viz, Spooner Scheisse.

And I'm afraid that the spayed crooner defeats me. Though it would not have been a bad fate for the likes of Bing Crosby, methinks.

<A History Lesson> Some people have been here, and have been regular posters to the site, for quite a long time: I'd single out <acirce> (still the leading poster by volume, though until recently Jessica was coming up fast on the flank), <Open Defence> (aka Deffi, aka Saint Deffi the Wise, aka, Everybody's Queen's Indian -- a cryptic allusion to the Dennis Quaid movie, Everybody's All-American), and <mack> who will go on forever despite being a mere slip of a lad who has read everything worth reading.

There was a 2nd wave -- me, Jessica, achieve, whiteshark, et al -- mostly around 2006. We felt like newbies then, now we're bleedin Ozymandias king of kings, look on my works ye mighty and despair, with our stone feet turning gangrenous in the desert.

Later still, a 3rd and perhaps 4th wave have emerged. It grows. Each CG innovation -- such as games vs grandmasters -- brings a new horde of phanatiques.

<Frogspawn> -- inspired by the great <Joe Williams>, who was the first to dedicate his forum to puns, oblique observations, wordplay and witticisms, and whom I will never forget for *showing me the weigh* -- has now been around for, what, a coupla years?

Is it time for a name change?

I'm quite aware that the place is only suffered to exist as a by-product of Jess's popularity -- because *she* looks in here sometimes, so do her smarter fans and admirers. But without Jess we'd be extinct froggies.

You're second wave?

Hard to believe since I feel you have almost as much reach as <JFQ> in these regions...

And <Eyal>, as I recall, is much the same era as <Jess> and *moi*. Though I admit that I had an earlier life using the name <Offield> -- but too many people took it as some kind of, gasp, shock, swoon, *sporting* reference ("It's an odd boy who doesn't like sport") ... when in reality it was just a hideously bad translation of 'Duchamp' into English, viz, 'of' + 'field'.

<Exécrable> is the word yer actual Frog would apply to this verbal abortion. Failing that, there's <infâme> -- which is much stronger than the English word 'infamous', and usually translated as 'vile' or 'loathsome'. Hence Voltaire's verdict on Christianity -- "écrasez l'infâme" -- was pretty strong stuff, real serpent-beneath-boot territory, and often translated as "crush the vile thing" or "squash the object of disgust".

Address your complaints to Voltaire, o good xtian readers. An 18th century chap, deism and The Enlightenment and all of that. Not really One Of Us, though naturally I will defend to the death his right to write everything what he wrote. Or maybe not to the actual *death*, on second thoughts ... but somebody in authority would get a pretty stiff letter of complaint. Even a *stiff kibitz* if I felt strongly enough.

He's especially funny on 'Saint' Cyril, a fundamentalist Christian bishop in Egypt who saw his personal task from The Lord as wiping out Greek culture, philosophy, mathematics, and anything that reeked of 'Paganism'. (Since a pagan was originally a country-dweller rather than a townie, it's another question entirely how a sophisticated urban philosophy came to be associated with *pagani*).

Probably because, once the Xtians got power, they persecuted the neo-platonists and other philosophers, driving them into the countryside. In much the same way that native Irish culture was driven into remote areas by English power in the 18th century, with *penal laws* resulting in *hedge schools*.

The latter story is told in the play Translations by Brian Friel -- which uses one language, English, to weave a brilliant trilingual plot between Gaelic, English and Latin. Somehow, it's been translated into French and was performed in Paris last week.

The other yarn -- 'Saint' Cyril and his hired thugs -- is the subject of a film which I haven't seen yet. The best known episode concerns a woman, Hypatia, the last great teacher and mathematician in the line of Euclid and Archimedes, who got murdered by Cyril's mob. They scraped the flesh off her bones with oyster shells, without -- as Voltaire observes -- having the common courtesy of killing her first.

But I digress.

Don't get me wrong, please, o crawlers and bots who scan webspace in search of words like 'blow up'. I mean *blow up* as in *inflate* -- "Take a really deep breath, now, I want you to blow up that USA doll, so that the President can ritually copulate with it."

A long-standing tradition, dating back to the inflation of the first balloon by the Montgolfiers. And their subsequent penetration of <La Nappe de Brouillard>.

Just like les capitaines Jean-Luc Picard and Jacques Tiberius l'Église, vraiment.

(note the spays preceding le Marque de Question...)

I have been flipping back some pages of 'Frogspawn' - page 120 - I remember for example, and we were doing the recurring numbercrunching math-spree thing... Well you were, and Jess even noticed that you were on 100, she was on 50, and someone else was on 150, which was a clear L-C-CL header for you... Anyhoo, I noticed we really hit it off early April 2007, along with William Blake P., Bill, who was the catalyst of many a masterpiece by you and Jess... We even started talking tournament strategy and psychology, you gave me your respect, I lost mine, you complimented me, I was asked to be rude for a change, and managed to do so on occasion, to your dismay.

Good times, but I too think a name-change is a smart move... To accomplish what, exactly, I couldn't say, but I'm getting closer.

Le Vaisseau Spatial Étoilé, l'Entreprise.

M'sieur l'Écossais, Chef des Ingénieurs

-- "Rayonnez-moi là-haut, l'Écossais!"

Monsieur Spocques, Chef des Vulcanologues

-- "C'est logique, ça."

I can never keep track of this page-counting, or even of ordinary who-said-what-when. In keeping with my principle of elevating inabilities into, well, *principles*, I'll claim it's because I *Don't Look Back*.

I mean, look at those who do. Going by his voice, Bob Dylan clearly got turned into a <Pillar of Salt> sometime around 1983. Like Mme Lotte.

But that's only <Jess>, and nobody in the entire history of CG has *ever* paid any attention to *her* ...

Well, OK, *I* have. But I have *frontal lobe issues*, so I don't count.>

<Cellar> I remember one of my favourite dark comedy movie scenes...

Cameron Diaz has hidden the dead body of a friend, Kent (Billy Zane) who came to visit the "summer house", in the cellar, he drank too much and must have had a heart attack; Natalie (Diaz) panics ; Her twice as old husband (newly wed) played by Harv Keitel, sits down, adjust his chair, not knowing or suspecting a thing yet, chair partly on the "cellar door", and because it's uneven, it "rocks" gets up, stamps really hard down on the cellar door, and... *CRACK*...

Natalie has just decided to tell that Kent is still in the House, pointing at the cellar door...

Dialogue went like this:

Kent!
Come on, lover boy!
Game's over!
Well?
Peek-a-boo, Kent.
Aren't you having breakfast!??
or have you already had the house special!!
He's dead, Nathalie.

I know. I think that it was his heart.

His heart?

You know, he had a bad heart.

And it just stopped?
After 30 years, it just gave out for no good reason?

Evelyn left him, and he was drinking all night.

HE"S NAKED!!

He showed up here drunk, he went for a swim, He came back, he drank some more, and then he fell asleep. And that's how I found him. I swear nothing happened!
I'm sorry, George. I just found him like that. He was dead, and I thought you would be jealous. - I was afraid you'd go off... - No, no, no, no. - I'm sorry. - I thought you'd go crazy. You know, I panicked. I thought that you would be jealous.

We'll put him in the storage shed for now... then we'll take him to Rockland.

[Kent's body is carried out of the cellar and has been dragged to the storage shed]

His neck is broken...
Did he fall?

[Pause]

When you stepped on...
the cellar door...

(agitato) 'Judge delivers young wife's ex-lover to authorities, "It was his heart," he says, dismissing broken neck.'

usw.

------

I watched the movie again last night, perhaps I look back more than you.

Anyhow, good ploy to turn your weaknesses to your advantage, my memory works a bit different. I remember the oddest little fragments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN1X...

Puts my previous post in the so urgently needed perspective.

Great low budget movie, directed by Jim Wilson, only three and a half characters featuring, and one of the best dark comedies I saw, with a small cult following. Metaphysically speaking.

I'm fairly certain I've told my Billy Zane story before. But I'm not going to go digging to check ... I'm just going to tell it again (or not).

A movie about WW2 fliers, Memphis Belle, had just been released. I was having lunch with its producer, David Puttnam, while the cast gave a press conference. Then - lunch having been of a partly liquid nature - I went to the, um, gents ... where I found myself standing at a urinal, in between Billy Zane and Matthew Modine.

It so happened that the wall space in front of us was occupied by an electronic screen showing stock prices and such. This was new at the time. All three of us stared vacantly at it, as custom requires in these situations.

Then I said "But what is it *for*?"
And one of the guys, probably Zane, said, "It's to stop us looking at each other's dicks, dummy".

And that was that. We'll add a laugh track in post-production, I guess ...

I thought the members of the newly named <Phrontiersmen> forum might be able to shed some light on these questions-

<Bradahski: ------Why is the third hand on a watch called the second hand? ------Why do "slowdown" and "slow up" mean the same thing? ------Why do "slim chance" and "fat chance" mean the same thing? --------Why do "overlook" and "oversee" mean opposite things? ------If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular? ---------Why is "bra" single and "panties" plural? ------Why is "abbreviated" such a long word? ------Why is "phonics" not spelled the way it sounds?>

Why is lingerie so popular...

AHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAAHAH

<Frogspawn> is dead- although I'll be openening <Frogspawn- the Sequel> this august when I'm on vacation, just in case some <bacteria> o philes still need a place to divide and conquer.

However, the new <Phrontiersman> forum is appropriate, to say the least- given the love of it's owner for Science Fiction and all things vintage.

To explore new <Phrontiers>... to go where no <Phrontiersman> has gone before....

<Dom: I *have* told this before, haven't I? Repetition is even worse than looking back as a sign of senility ...> I vaguely remember so, yes... And to drive home your point even more convincingly, me starring, I noticed I told you the real True Story of watching <van Wely> at the actual Max Euwe Center, late 80's, trouncing the at that point best computers, at Blitz! A little over two years ago, and I was happily telling it again last month I believe, almost a cabon copy! At least I'm consistent...

Repetition, noticed only *upon* looking back... Where must that rank?

Zane was cool eh? Well, still is, probably...

Isn't it exciting about the new name change???

Long live the <Phrontiersmen> forum@@

Unfortunately I'll be heading for bed now, but I count on you two to provide a nice inauguratorial party/thread/dialogue, so I can "read my <Phrontistery> in the morning!"

heh - good to see you around, also at LONG LIVE CHAIRMAN'S !