GRGR6: The Dog Ate My Homework

[Joe Varo]

On Mon, 16 Dec 1996 LARSSON at VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU tardily wrote:

> Still lagging behind the Group Read, but in sight of the pack:
>
> [...]
> 
> 4) "Reg Le Froyd" -- anyone care to play with the possible meanings,
>    permutations and combinations of this name?
> 
> "King of the Cold"?
> 
> Le Froyd sez that he is "related" to the sea.  Well, we all are, aren't we?
> If you ever saw that series on science produced by Ma Bell and animated by
> Chuck Jones, you might recall the first installment--HEMO THE GREAT.  Hemo,
> the title character, is a blood cell (as in "hemoglobin") but, he rather
> shamefully admits, his name derives from the Greek for "sea water."  The
> salt of the amniotic fluid, the salt of our tears and those electrolytes
> in the urine (that we'll see later on in GR) all make us "related to the
> sea" as well.
> 	So Reg is another of the lost, orphaned, dispossessed, exiled who
> troop through these pages!

Actually, I was wondering if TRP wasn't forcing the reader to think
"Freud", i.e. Sigmund.  Or is "froyd" an archaic spelling of the french
"froid"? If it is, then I'm quite possibly all wet here.

Had TRP written "froid", then a reader who knows some french would most
likely hear "frwa" rather than "freud".  By changing the -i- to a -y- he
forces you to see and hear "freud"

Also, I think that one can play with the french a bit more:  instead of
"Reg Le Froyd" you could have "regle fro[i/y]d", which (depending on
accents aigu or grave) could mean something like "I rule cold" or "cold
rule[r]".

Don't know what it all might mean, but....

> [...]
> 
> 6) Myron Grunton and the "truffles of truth".  More ovine imagery -- any
>    comments?
> 
> "Porcine," don't you mean?  MG, as Weisenberger notes, is a "sweet grunter"
> and pigs are used to dig for truffles.  

Yup...ovine...sheep. (how the hell did I do that?)

> [...]
> 
> And it continues to the present.  Just ask the dodos in the state legislature
> who decided that the State Universities in MN would be much more "effective"
> and "efficient" if we were all merged with the 2-year community and tech.
> colleges.  Now the governor is talking about further merger with the mighty
> Univ. of Minn. itself--again in the name of "effectiveness" and "efficiency"--
> all the while these "friends of education" are trying to gut the public
> higher ed. budget, raise tuitions to be "competitive" with places like
> Gustavus Adolphus and Carlton (which have some of highest tuitions in the
> country)!  <grrr>

Pretty off-topic here, but when I was in college, PA did much the same
thing:  the school I was at was the sole completely state owned & operated
university (Penn State is/was some kind of hybrid) and there were a dozen
or so smaller state "colleges".  The school I was at consistently came in
at or under budget while the colleges usually went over budget.  The
solution?  Call the colleges universities, put them all in the same pot
with my school and start playing with the budget.  It lead to the sole
instance of student activism I saw during my entire four years.

> [...]

Joe