<Napoléon premier empereur>

turned into

<Nappe ollé ombres miettes hampe air heure>

- So, officer, he pawned the family rottweilers, Bing and Beau, robbed the post office, poor Mrs Noonan was in a terrible state altogether, and screeched off in our daughter's Merc, yelling something about Cheltenham and a dead cert. Is there nothing you can do?

- Fraid not, ma'am. Outside the jurisdiction. We could *try* extradition, but...

- What? I don't mean *him*, you fool. I mean the car. Poor Cliodhna is lost without it, she's having to use her Hummer instead...

- I'm sorry, ma'am. But the car is now the legal property of a poker-playing gentleman, Mr Mack. Maybe you could, like, buy it back from him?

A film review uses the phrase "a noirish movie". The sub, unfamiliar with the adjective, helpfully moves the space and turns it into "an Oirish movie".

Sigh. Another time, reviewing a play, I tried to quote a line from it -- where a character said he was "trapped between Father War and Mother Morphine". This review was needed at once so I phoned it in to a copytaker 20 mins after the play ended.

I'm moving up to 223. Let's see them make a stupid movie about *that*, Mrs Murphy...

Actually, I twigged the Waugh/Murphy Mondegreen just in time that night, and phoned in a correction. This itself led to a situation of some, ah, delicacy.

In this era before widespread cellphone coverage, I had to make an emergency call from a pub. I stopped short, mid-call, aware that an eerie silence had fallen. I suddenly realized I'd been shouting "No, it's morphine, morphine, M-O-R-P-H-I-N-E, and it's important, MORPHINE" into a public phone in a bar in a strange town...

- Hey, Sean, that must be one o' dem drug dealer fellahs on your phone there, d'you still have that baseball bat under the counter?

Here is post 3000 and it's all for you:

1. The... Ant/Larch

2. No Poofters

3. These Romans are Crazy

VERY ENTERTAINING

This can't be overemphasized. From your description of the piece, I went in dreading some <horrifying Spivakkian impenetrable nightmare> but instead I got a <Ripping Yarn>!!

Yes, there is so a narrator, Private Dick and a plot. This Dick just has read a lot of stuff.

Comparisons to <Matrix>? I don't like to say that word even, the film didn't rise to whatever organization it's really fronting for in my opinion. <Canoe Reeves'> Kitsch-Branded Face ruined all of it for me.

Anyways <Entropantersew> is much more entertaining than that stinkin movie.

One wishes the one were longer and the other Kurtzer.

Much more appropriate is DeLillo's <White Noise>, I think, since it and <Entropanto> are very strongly reminiscent of each other. I thought of White Noise regularly while reading Antropinto. Both are vivid, and pregnant.

I will be re-reading <Entropanto> and give you a better critique later, perhaps situating your work in the psycho-social history of the <Ptenisnet> Dynasty in <Egypt>, where we vanquished the <Wog> in a thrilling 900 over 311 under 99th Cricket Test.

What a Bloody Great moment for England!!

<My fear is my only courage...>

Except that the real line is

Is it the blank features which so brilliantly convey an impression of the decorticated skull behind? Is <Canoe> nature's revenge for all the Hollywood 'dumb blondes' (from Monroe via Sharon Stone to K. Dunst) who were actually highly intelligent persons?

Or is typecasting just so rife that producers automatically think of Canoe if the action is in cyberspace? Maybe we've been fooled, and Canoe is really a CGI special effect, a Max Headroom de nos jours? One look, and you can tell there ain't no there there.

"I looked in his eyes. There was nobody home. Then my extrasensory twitchers sniffed something. There *was* somebody home, but he was downstairs hiding in the basement with the lights off..."

I picked up a small wooden rectangle which had a metal spring and a piece of cheese attached. Silently, I handed it to Archer, who put it to his nose.

Hmm. I wonder if Irish chessplayers are unusually dependent on Queen moves? Or do they need permission from the Bishop first? *checks database*

Right- Stop that!

Meanwhile, I found an authentic Chessic Quasi-Mondegreen, also related to those <funny translations of notices> what we did earlier.

These seem to be from Russian, translated into 'English' by some Bulgarian, in an actual book:

Gelfand-Ivanchuk, 2000

29... Nb2!

"The black knight makes a brave cruise over the white's rear."

Hmm. Fascinating...

Other examples include:

"To find convenient stands for Black's knights is not an easy task."

and:

Khalifman: "That is only in the logical line which was broken before the World War Second. What took place in London was a retreat for half a century backwards. Figuratively speaking Kasparov has been sitting on the stove for five years, and then he pointed a finger who would be his rival."

Limerick used to be known as Stab City, but they've graduated to drive-by shootings. There's a seriously good (and funny) Limerick novelist named Michael Curtin (best book is The Plastic Tomato Cutter; followed by The League Against Christmas, and The Cove Shivering Club).

His titles tend to be eccentric, one possible reason so few people have heard of him, but he's wickedly readable. Meanwhile, the McCourt writer clan, Malachy and Frank (Angela's Ashes, etc) are much better known for their sentimental twaddle.

One of them wrote a book named <'Tis>. Which prompted another local wit to produce one entitled <'Tis in me Ass>.

Then I saw your assessment of McCourt as <sentimental twaddle> and decided not to risk offending.

There are three stories where Ireland (or being Irish) is connected in some way with England and treason - the character of Richard Madden in "The Garden of Forking Paths" (<An Irishman at the orders of the English, a man accused of a certain lack of zealousness, perhaps even treason, how could he fail to embrace and give thanks for this miraculous favour – the discovery, capture, perhaps death, of two agents of the German Empire?>); and of course "The Shape of the Sword" and "The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero", Irish setting playing a crucial role in both (In the latter, though, Borges arrives at Ireland in a typically roundabout way: <The action takes place in an oppressed yet stubborn country – Poland, Ireland, the republic of Venice, some South American or Balcan state... in 1824, let us say, for convenience's sake; in Ireland, let us also say.>)

Debate away, my man. I'll not take offence, (or <offense>, for that matter).