Wandering Oh Rocks ("tell us in American words")

[Robin Landseadel]

In our latest episode of "What's Up With Weird Terri?" we open with a  
scene in D major by a brook:

	"What was thaas? Fog was whaas? Too mult sleepth. Let
	sleepth.

	But really now whenabouts? Expatiate then how much times we
	live in. Yes?"

Scene two, in which Dora gets her oats.

	And let you go, Airmienious, and mick your Fundemaintalish
	modest mock Pie out of Humbles up your of Wiederher-
	end. Where your apexojesus will be a point stellung.
	of order. With a geing groan grunt and a croak click cluck. 2 And
	my faceage kink and kurkle trying to make keek peep. 3 Are you
	right there, Michael, are you right? Do you think you can hold
	on by sitting tight? Well, of course, it's awful angelous. Still I
	don't feel it's so dangelous. Ay, I'm right here, Nickel, and I'll
	write. Singing the top line why it suits me mikey fine. But,
	yaghags hogwarts and arrahquinonthiance, it's the muddest
	thick that was ever heard dump since Eggsmather got
	smothered in the plap of the pfan.

In scene three, Terri finds his long missing copy of "On Writing Well"  
by William Zinsser, and like the Catamanical Cyprian late to the  
woods, changes sex once more and enters into a vow of silence.

Scene four . . .

On Sep 12, 2010, at 4:05 AM, M Choakumchild wrote:

> Molly's protest provides little comfort to the exasperated reader who,
> like Odysseus,  sails on through Joyce's wandering rocks.  Of course,
> the reader, strapped to the mast, is rewarded with a song only (this
> will get me in trouble with those pc-police) an Irishman, singing in a
> language forced upon his tongue as coal tar water but made into
> diamonds under the pressure of Jesuits, can sing. Joyce had a good
> ear. But he had more than good ear; he knew a good deal about
> language. In the chapter ostensibly under discussion here Tom Pynchon
> the younger tries out more than the ear he hasn't got yet, he shows
> off his knowledge of things linguistic and ha dabbles in a bit of
> communications theory: he applies his Adams and McLuhan and Graves and
> Rougemont & Co.  The inanimate objects that cause Benny so much
> trouble have names. Man is tool maker. Man is word maker too. Usually,
> but not always, we have an object and we give it a name. Sometimes,
> though, as we learn from Humpty, we start with the word. Benny, not
> quite content to be a Man, plays God. Man gets to name stuff. God made
> stuff from chaos and was there, in the beginning, when there was only
> the Word.  So Benny, like some mock-Prometheus, steals language from
> the Gods.He is punished and he doesn't quite know how to navigate the
> wandering rocks. Where is Athena? Playing with the boyz.
>
> We've mentioned Tanner's wonderful book, _The American Mystery_. Ian
> F. A. Bell's Introduction can be read online.
>
> Thanks for reading,
>
> Mr. M