serendipitous lowbrow deconstructions

[kelber at mindspring.com]

My kids tell me that the hot new phrase used to indicate that something is desirable ("cool" to an oldster like me) is "it pwns" -- variously pronounced "pwins," "pawns," or "p-owns."  They think it derives from an on-line typo ("pwns" instead of "owns") that caught on like wildfire, virtually overnight.. Somewhat akin to how LOL, IMHO, etc. entered into common usage.

 
-----Original Message-----
From: Cometman <cometman_98 at yahoo.com>
Sent: Oct 8, 2005 4:16 AM
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: serendipitous lowbrow deconstructions


Grimm's law, we laughingly supposed in our "History of English" class,
was caused by Visigoths or somebody sitting around a campfire saying,
"ok, tomorrow, everybody - where we've been saying "P" start using "F"
instead" - anyway, pronunciation and similar cultural phenomena differ
in different places and times.  It's really quite fascinating.  Every
time I've been reading "Eastern", for instance, I've been thinking
"Boston" and for Western, "Taos" - the folk there have quite different
customs, I hear... 
"You said butadiene - I heard "beauty dying"" - Pynchon
--------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2005 20:40:36 -0700
> From: David Casseres <david.casseres at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: id brouhaha

> I'm guessing that as a kid, you never suffered the humiliation of
> being required to clasp your hands together and recite a prayer to
> someone else's "god." 

No, I was lucky I guess to go to school after Madalyn Murray O'Hair's
stand.  We did have to say the pledge but I honestly don't remember
that we did it with any regularity.  That's actually worse: I read the
only other country where people had to do that was Nazi Germany.  The
thing was written by a flag salesman! Umberto Eco's new book has a
passage where the kid (I really like Eco when he writes about kid life)
hears his neighbor during the Mussolini assembly yell "Hickory" instead
of "Victory" (or some such homonym, I'm too lazy to find the passage)
I'm sure it'd be better not to be subjected to any of that nonsense in
the first place, though.

>> I'd love to frame the dispute in love.  But it's actually not my
>> dispute, and the other side isn't interested in love, only in power.


don't let them force you into not loving them! 
-Love is the Law, Love under Will - Edward Alexander Crowley
(who's Will?)