The Early Years
In general, in my early years I picked up, from several sources, habits of speech that were either archaic, or British, or both. For example, to this day, I have to stop and retype "honour" as "honor", and so forth.
by Victor Appleton II and Victor Appleton, respectively.I read many of the Tom Swift Jr. series and a few of the original Tom Swift series sometime before 6th grade. They are responsible for me wanting to become an inventor, particularly of robots. (See Tom Swift and his Giant Robot .) Eventually I settled for being a computer programmer, which is not that different from being an inventor.
I never actually owned any of the Tom Swift Jr. books -- I had to borrow them from a friend of my older brother -- but I bought few of the original series at a church fair, for about a nickel apiece. My parents eventually sold them in a barn sale. I have no idea how much they fetched, and I don't remember if I profited from the deal.
The books in the original "Tom Swift" series were written back in the early years of the 20th century, and were probably my first exposure to archaisms in language, as well as to rather different perspectives on society.
A lot of my notions of spirituality and morality grew out of exposure to the Bible beginning at the end of 4th grade or so. Since we used the King James version, it also introduced a lot of archaisms into my vocabulary and locutions.
The Heart is a Rebel was a Billy Graham movie that I saw at Camp Good News during the summer between 4th and 5th grade. It was about a little boy with a bad heart that needed to undergo open-heart surgery -- quite a new and unusual thing in those days. His mother had accepted Jesus, and his father had not, and they fought about this. Not unlike my own parents. Anyway, halfway through this movie, there was an intermission of sorts, during which they showed us Hemo the Magnificent, which included color footage of an exposed, beating heart, complete with sound. After that, they resumed the original movie. After that, I was terrified of the sound of a beating heart, especially my own: What if I should hear it stop? I was well into my 30's before I could sleep on my side again.
When my older brother read some of these (especially "The Tell-Tale Heart") to me in 6th grade, they gave me nightmares. More on that under The Heart is a Rebel and Hemo the Magnificent, above. Later, I was able to read them without ill effect. These stories introduced whole new set of archaisms into my language, as well as some Regency (?) notions of behaviour.
(Sherlock Holmes):Again, these stories introduced whole new set of archaisms into my language, as well as some Victorian notions of behaviour.
Once again, these stories introduces whole new set of archaisms, although they do no go so far back. These were written and set on Cape Cod in the 1930's and 40's. Because of having read these (especially after reading Sherlock Holmes), I have been known to write "clue" as "clew" and "curb" as "kerb". It is also from these books that I acquired the pseudo-Cape-Cod expressions "Wa-el" and "At-tall".
See my favourites page for a list of those novels that are particular favourites of mine, regardless of how they affected me later.
Quotes:
- "Would you believe ... ?"
- "Missed it by that much!"
- "The old <your favourite trick> trick!"
- "Sorry about that, Chief!"
I was surprised to find that many of these one-liners remained in the speech of the general populace for 10 years or more.
Quotes:Again, I was surprised to find that many of these one-liners remained in the speech of the general populace for 10 years or more.
- "Hoooo-gan!"
- "I see nossingk!"
Song: The Little Nash Rambler
See:
Traditional Music site
Lyrics Download site
Lyrics On Demand site
The Playmates own web siteThis didn't really have a deep influence on my thought processes or behaviour, but it's a long-lasting memory, and I'm apt to burst out with snatches of it at odd moments.
N.B. Lyrics from www.lyricsandsongs.com are not listed because they have annoying Flash advertisements.
Song: The Court of King Caractacus
See:
Lyrics Download site
Rolf Harris's own web siteNote the peculiar spelling of the king's name; although this king's name has been spelled variously as Caratacus, Caractacus, Caradoc, and several others, I have nowhere else seen it spelled "Catatacus" -- even in the title of this very song!
Again, this didn't really have a deep influence on my thought processes or behaviour, but it's a long-lasting memory, and I'm apt to burst out with snatches of it at odd moments.
N.B. Lyrics from www.lyricsandsongs.com are not listed because they have annoying Flash advertisements.
The College Years
John introduced me to, among other things, spoonerisms.For one semester, John and I had adjacent dorm rooms. One fine day, I went to the AV department, and had a sign made. I took it back to the dorm, and affixed it to the underside of the bookshelf over his bed. (People didn't generally lock there dorm rooms in those days, at least not at our college.) (Our dorm had all the furniture affixed to the wall like shelves. I believe this was some sort of cost-saving measure, as it dodged some kind of local ordinance.) Eventually I went to bed, but didn't go to sleep right away. Some time later, I heard John go into his room and retire for the night. After a few minutes, there was a tremendous "ker-ti-THUMP" as John fell out of bed. A minute later he showed up at my door, grinning broadly at my sign, which said:
How About a Nice
Sandnut Jelter
&
Butley Peanwich?
My niece has always referred to this as "talking sideways".
At the time, I was inspired by the concept of communities in which time is effectively stopped by concensus or by law, and people wishing to live in a particular, probably obsolete, social environment, could find one of these and live there.
What I most remember taking away from the book was the concept of telecommuting, and envisioning a future beyond college in which I lived in the woods or on the shore in Maine, drove a Jeep, and wrote software for one or more companies based elsewhere on the map.
Somehow it didn't occur to me that in due course future shock would catch up with me.
- The Pink Panther (1963)
- A Shot In The Dark (1964)
- The Return of the Pink Panther (1975)
- The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)
- Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)
Quotes:
NOTE: While the first two movies came out in the early 1960's, I didn't see them until the 1970's.
- Mrs. Leverlilly: But that's a priceless Steinway!
Clouseau: Not anymore!And many others. I will enter them in as they come to me. I seem to have lost their use in recent years. Many of the of them are funny at least as much for Sellers's atrocious "French" accent as for anything else, including the one above.
specifically A Fidgety Frolic
This was introduced to me by my wife Martha. She and her best friend used to listen to it by the hour. Eventually, so did my wife and I, along with our kids. Quotes:
- Mr. Copp: Mr. Brown, I'm going to sneeze!
Mr. Brown: At who?
Mr. Copp: At-Choo!- "I cannot envy little Claude, he never had a chance.
To think that they could be so cruel, now everybody dance!"
I don't know how many of their albums I heard. Some I listened to many, many times. And there was a time when my friend David Betz could recite many of the skits in whole or in any part. Many phrases and dialogs found their way into my vocabulary.
Quotes:
- "I think we're all bozos on this bus."
- "Pleased to meet you Mr -- 'Uh, Clem!'"
- "READ UNHAPPY -- MACNAM"
- "Let's stand him on his head!"
THUD!
"Aw, he's no fun, he fell right right over!"- "Antelope Freeway -- 1/256th mile"
- "Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers!"
- "Follow along in your books and repeat after me,
as we learn our first few words in Turkish:
towel ... cigarette ... May I see your passport please ..."
A few skits from the TV series, Monty Python's Flying Circus 1, lodged in my memory, notably the one(s) about an infestation of goats. One utterance that is a commonplace in our family is "And Now For Something Completely Different". Mostly I just didn't get it.
I saw the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail when it came out. I found the black knight scene offensive, and I found the ending (with the police roundup) vastly disappointing. I still do. However, I enjoyed a great deal of the rest of the movie, and have even come to embrace the "just a flesh wound" line.
1 This link previously referred to the following URL, but it no longer seems to work: http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/python/monty.html
NOTE: Unfortunately, the link on that page to http://www.conceptioncorporation.com does not work at the time of this writing (14-Sep-2005). specifically A Pause in the Disaster
Dr. Wogrin was in charge of the University Computing Center during the year I attended UMass. The UCC included, among other things, a monstrous mainframe by CDC (Control Data Corporation) called a Cyber 70. Anyway, in some discussion or lecture, Dr. Wogrin said something to the effect of "Anything one computer can do, a bigger computer can do faster and better". At least that's how I heard it. I have always referred to this as "Wogrin's Law". This was during the heyday of mini-computers (of which I was a fan) and just at the dawn of 4-bit microcomputers.
For an amusing story, see: http://postdiluvian.org/~seven/funlib/raiders.html
ELIZA was a program originally written in LISP for the IBM 7094 computer. "Weizenbaum said that ELIZA provided a 'parody' of 'the responses of a nondirectional ([Rogerian]) psychotherapist in an initial psychiatric interview.'" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA). Quotes:
The following resulted from a run about 3/4 of an hour long, with two or three people (me, my fiance, and her best friend) taking turns providing totally unconnected input:
Note that an ELIZA-like program was used as the user interface for "Dr. Memory" in We're All Bozos on This Bus by The Firesign Theatre.
"Perhaps in your fantasies we have been vastly amused and highly entertained ever since each other."
The 1970's
Starting in the mid-to-late 1970's, I began to be more influenced in thought than in speech patterns, and more by books than by other things. Remember, not all the books that have had an influence on me are my favourites, and not all my favourites had a lasting influence on me.
Quotes:
- "Blucher!"
- "Stay close to de candles."
- "Put ... ze candle ... beck!"
- "Could be worse" ... "Could be raining!"
- "Werewolf ..."
"Werewolf? "
"There wolf. There castle. "
"Why are you talking like that?"
"I thought you wanted me to."- "Damn your eyes!"
"Too late!"- "What 'ump?"
The essential, seminial work of fiction involving computer viruses ("phages"), hacking, and the notion that "information wants to be free".
For some strange reason, the above link does not work in this context. Typing into the URL field of a browser window works just fine.
by Larry Niven and David JerroldHmmm. I'm having a hard time finding a good web page for this title. Meantime --
Quotes:"Pilg! Where have you been?"
;"Coming back!"
The first viral-AI-software story I recall reading. Follow the link above for other reviews and comments.
For some strange reason, the above link does not work in this context. Typing into the URL field of a browser window works just fine.
The 1980's
Song: The Ballad of Irving
See:
Yahoo!
Lyrics Download
SmartLyricsAgain, this didn't really have a deep influence on my thought processes or behaviour, but it's a long-lasting memory, and I'm apt to burst out with snatches of it at odd moments.
N.B. Lyrics from www.lyricsandsongs.com are not listed because they have annoying Flash advertisements.
It's odd, but I remember this as having come out in the 1970's, but the link above says it came out in 1981.
Anyway, it strongly affected how experienced "the net" for many years thereafter. In those days, "the net" was for me embodied in "the engineering net" (later simply the E-net) at DEC. However, I also had access to the ARPAnet via a gateway, as well as at least one dialup account (on MIT-MC or MIT-AI), plus dialup access to some number of bulletin boards, plus occasional access via X.25 to Telenet and Tymnet .
It was decidedly weird when the multiple-hop linkages started breaking down -- I always had this feeling of an early-warning temblor, followed by the link I was using to some far-flung machine falling back and falling back, shorter and shorter, with me tiptoeing back along it as on a tightrope. Having the link crash utterly underneath me before I got back was at least mildly mind-shattering.
Master of the stone-cold deadpan delivery. Also master of really twisted one-liners. Quotes:
Two many to mention here, but see http://www.freemaninstitute.com/Wright.htm, http://www.notso.com/wright.htm, and http://meer.net/~mtoy/steven_wright.html.
Mistress of the most cultivated delivery I've ever encountered. Quotes:
Two many to mention here, but see http://www.workinghumor.com/quotes/rita_rudner.shtml and http://kumo.swcp.com/synth/text/rudner_facts_about_men. My favourite:
- All men are afraid of eyelash curlers. I sleep with one under my pillow, instead of a gun.
I have read some of his more recent works, but not the most recent books, but they didn't have that strong an influence on my views of the present or of the future.
- Burning Chrome (short stories)
- Neuromancer
- Count Zero
- Mona Lisa Overdrive
The 1990's
Quotes:
- "You've got to get up pret-ty early in the morning to catch me peeking through your bedroom window!"
- "Some people ... are afraid ... I might ... reproduce!"
- cole slaw
- "And you're the mouse!"
The 2000's
I really can't think of anything I've read, heard, or watched that has influenced the way I speak or act, except maybe things like the war on Iraq or the hurricane Katrina disaster.
