GR excludes the preterite????????????

[Eric Alan Weinstein University Of London Centre For English Studies]

  Bob's note, followed by Eric's reply: 
>
          Let me humbly suggest that you buy something other than a
>          Ford until Ford begins to adopt the MacBride Principles for
>          Fair Employment practices in Northern Ireland.  Sorry to
>          inject politics into the Pynchon discussion.  Actually I am
>          not really sorry to do so.  Bob Fuhrel


      Greetings  Bob,

     Gosh darn thanks man 'cause you know I came THAT CLOSE
to buying an immorally produced car. But not no, no siree. So I went
out today and I looked  for a car company that didn't do nasty, sneaky, 
dirty rotten thangs to nice clean honest folks and...do you know what
I found out? There ain't any! They all invested in the old regimes in 
Isreal, S. Africa, Nigeria, Nevada...

    But, heck, that didn't stop me. I decided to build a kit car, make it
run on 
water to save smelly naughty petrol an' use only recycled and biological 
 parts, bits of orange, marmalade, pantyhose, paint thinner, as   found in 
rubbish bins around  Labour-supporting buroughs. It's almost built now.
And as soon as I finish mine, I'm gonna send you detailed instructions 
on how to build your own...good luck! 

      Okay, Okay. In truth, I use the public trasport (much more reliable
now that 
the IRA have stopped putting big bombs on overcrowded trains, lets hope the 
Unionist bombs don't replace them soon) and was trying to illustrate a point
about 
teacher's pay being less than grand in scale. The example of the Ford Fiesta was
employed as it is just about the cheapest car to buy and run available in G.B.
(I understand however that "Honda"may soon be in a position to "make it simple,"
while the Volvo come equipt with dual protection brain scanning clipper chip
de--vices aproved by Al Gore's dental hygenist, a former wife of Dr. Emory
Bortz. 
  
     By the way, I have recently changed my middle name to "MacBride Principles"
and named my daughter's pet invisable albatross  Bob. Congradulations!  

E.A. Weinstein
                                                       
   P.S.  
       By the way, if anyone knows how I can help to bring an end to 350
years of 
strife in Northern Ireland via teaching  Scotish nuns to read Sanskrit ,
please E-Mail
my mate, General   "Bingo" " Tierra Del Fuego"  "Pips" Chernaik,
at cesbingo at sas.ac.uk .  Or not, as the case may be. 
I mean  I might, after all, be kidding.