Re: a picture I promised

> I don't know. Are you blokes really wise to be making
> Jewish jokes in this holy season of Advent?

No ethnic jokes here ... "Be a ____" could have been recruitment for
anything. To me it is an absurd sight in the tradition of a Thurber
image, including a ludicrous pooch.

> On another tack altogether. A couple of months ago, one or two
> of you expressed interest in Lynn Truss's book on punctuation
> - 'Eats, shoots & leaves.' It may surprise you as much as it has
> the rest of us over here that it's currently the number one seller
> on (the UK) Amazon's non-fiction list. So you see? I'm not
> the Lone Stickler, after all.

I may get a copy of this book. Fred is insisting on my teaching him
English. There is a fluffy white dog hereabouts that he wants to get to
know better, and he is under the impression that speaking SOME dialect of
English will help his chances.

I am told, by Someone Who Knows Of What She Speaks, that fluffy white
dogs are to the dog world what the actress Cameron Diaz is to the human
world -- or it might be that Cameron Diaz is to the human world what
fluffy white dogs are to the dog world. I forget. I am notoriously
clueless about women and who fits where.

Fred, unlike me, is a notoriously lecherous fellow with a roving eye.
Last week I caught him trying to wolf-whistle at a fluffy creature, so to
teach him a lesson I set a few wolfs upon him, and he returned home some
time later with a black eye and a whiff of humility about him. But that
didn't last. It never does. He has no shame. He offers to give me
lessons, but I know better than to be so easily swayed.

Meanwhile, a dear departed English professor friend points out to me, in
a message I may pass freely to this list, that Louis Menand last week
wrote a review of the new collection of John Updike stories in which he
made free and easy comparisons between young Updike and the star of the
New Yorker at the time, our friend Fast Jerry Salinger, who is to the dog
world what -- oh, forget that comparison.

Let it be noted that Salinger got his due for the time at which he wrote,
and Updike was passed the rhetorical torch, and such is the state of
reputations as 2003 melts into 2004 and the said once-upon-a-time-popular
writer prepares to celebrate a nice round birthday in a few weeks.

Cheers from me -- and even from Fred, who would join the list if I let
him near the keyboard. The shameless publicity hound....

--tim

P.S. By the way, this week's series of messages triggered a veritable
avalanche of lurking subscribers who suddenly and without comment opted
out. Who knows why? I gave up second-guessing -- and worrying about --
these things a very long time ago. Who knows what anything really means?

P.P.S. Three cheers for Cecilia. She'll be reading across the street
from my chiropractor, who single-handedly makes it possible for me to
type this fast.

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Received on Tue Dec 2 20:59:26 2003