HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: GE.SPM@forsythe.stanford.edu (Suzanne Mills)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Mangled Song Lyrics
Date: 2 Jan 1993 14:38:26 -0800
Organization: Stanford University
NNTP-Posting-Host: morrow.stanford.edu

goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu (David Goldfarb) writes:
>        Jon Carroll, a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, devotes
>an entire column to these once in a while. He calls them Mondegreens. The
>derivation of the name escapes me, except that, like malapropism, it is
>an eponym.
 [remainder deleted]

The name derives from supposedly the granddaddy of all mangled
lyrics, a mishearing of the ballad The Bonny Earl of Murray:

  Ye Highlands, and ye Lawlands,
  Oh where have you been?
  They have slain the Earl of Murray
  And Lady Mondegreen.

The woman who heard the lines this way as a child always wondered
what poor Lady Mondegreen had done to deserve such a fate, until she
finally realized that the last line went:

   And laid him on the green.

Many people responded to Carroll's column with accounts of their own
mangled lyrics.  My favorite was the little boy who heard the Bob
Dylan song as:

   The ants are my friends, they're blowing in the wind,
   The ants are blowing in the wind.


Best wishes for a happy New Year from an occasional lurker,

Suzanne
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Subject: Re: *Any* kind of r.a.b split, or at least a *serious* discussion
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Sat, 26 Dec 1992 02:04:32 GMT

In article <1992Dec25.091537.28480@nevada.edu> wwhitman@nevada.edu (MICHAEL WISE) writes:

>I don't feel I was in error when I characterized Stein as a fat, lazy 
>lesbian with a serious grudge against the more successful Hemingway.

How is Stein's sexual orientation and weight relevant?
I think you were in error to believe that they are relevant to the 
point you were making.


--Mike


-- 
Mike Godwin,    |"I'm waiting for the one-man revolution
mnemonic@eff.org| The only one that's coming."
(617) 864-0665  |                           
EFF, Cambridge  |                   --Robert Frost
From: ah190@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Stuart Pearl)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Mark Twain Mystery
Date: 30 Dec 1992 20:39:12 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc10.ins.cwru.edu


Here's a brain teaser - does anyone know where Mark Twain would have
been on Sunday, September 2, 1888?  Some folks place him on a trip 
in Europe while others say he was in St. Louis.  Thanks in advance.

-stu
-- 
                   ---===<<< Stuart Pearl >>>===---
                           Cleveland, Ohio
                      ah190@cleveland.freenet.edu
                         --------------------
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan)
Subject: Re: *Any* kind of r.a.b split, or at least a *serious* discussion
Keywords: frogs, flights thereof
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 23:33:01 GMT

In article <1992Dec23.215117.13990@unet.net.com> heidi@wales.net.com (Heidi Wolf) writes:

>There's a book about this (she says, ducking warily under the
>crossed glares of Messrs. Maddox and Mammel):  TUESDAY, by a
>fellow named Wiesner.  It's a picture book for children --
>no text, just a series of watercolor pictures of the nocturnal
>adventures of a group of frogs who float quietly through the
>(apparently Midwestern) night air, each on a lilypad.  The lack
>of text seemed to me to add an eerie but enjoyable sense of
>the silence with which the frogs travel.  The final page has
>a wonderful visual punchline, as the local pigs rise from
>their pens for their own tour of town.

	Yes! a very witty and wordless adventure. It won one of the
children's book awards this year (Caldecott, Newberry?) for best
illustrated children's book. 

	Keith - who wishes everyone Yuletide Froggies.


--

Keith Morgan kamorgan@athena.mit.edu
In the end nothing could be said of his work except that it was
preposterous and true and totally unacceptable. Edward Whittemore
From: goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu (David Goldfarb)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Mangled song lyrics
Date: 1 Jan 1993 09:42:19 GMT
Organization: The Sinister Icy Black Hand of Death Club
Reply-To: goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu (David Goldfarb)
NNTP-Posting-Host: maelstrom.berkeley.edu
Originator: goldfarb@maelstrom.berkeley.edu

	Jon Carroll, a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, devotes
an entire column to these once in a while. He calls them Mondegreens. The
derivation of the name escapes me, except that, like malapropism, it is
an eponym. (Anyone who really wants to know the details can ask him by
email -- jrc@well.sf.ca.us)

	ObBook: Jon Carroll has a "best-column" collection coming out in 
the near future, which will probably include at least one column of 
Mondegreens. (And what did the topic ever have to do with books, anyway?)

-- 
   David Goldfarb          | 
goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu  |      "Hey, mister! Your ninja's dragging!" 
goldfarb@UCBOCF.BITNET     | 
goldfarb@soda.berkeley.edu |
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: 92 in rabreview
Date: 29 Dec 1992 16:09:49 GMT
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
NNTP-Posting-Host: oas.stanford.edu

Rod Williams writes:

	Jan Yarnot writes:

		I've had an eventful r.a.b. year.  I read some 220 books, 
		mostly mysteries, but some of the best were by David Lodge 
		(who is indeed funny, and Catholic, and I don't think ex-, 
		JoAnn, more muddlin' through like I do, and who is married 
		with two children, which doesn't leave "gay" out, but the 
		way he writes, I have my doubts) (I don't want to get flamed
		.... I just mean his hetero-sex scenes seem to indicate an 
		authorial interest)

	Yes...I think someone was confusing Lodge with David Plante,
	an American writer who is funny and ex-Catholic and gay...

And the someone was no less than the RABworm. It took a Goliath, Rod
Williams, to seperate the two Davids. BTW, there are no ex-Catholics.
Its just that one gives up practising. Popery is more like bicycle-riding
than piano-playing. Once learnt, never forgotten, and practise may make
perfect, but perfection is best left to the perfectionists.

							RABworm
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: hoosiers@carson.u.washington.edu (Mary Loveless)
Subject: Re: Making notations in your books?
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 21:29:07 GMT

In article <1992Dec21.204009.4090@cbfsb.cb.att.com> colten@cbnewsb.cb.att.com (marc.colten) writes:
>In article <3179@devnull.mpd.tandem.com>, rspence@mpd.tandem.com (Russell Spence) writes:
>> In article <1992Dec21.024845.22015@mercury.unt.edu> jacob@ponder.csci.unt.edu (Tom Jacob) writes:
>> >> What are your feelings about making notes, highlighting, etc., in the
>> >> books that you own?  Although I wish I could do so in my books (it does
>> 
>One incredible exception.  Bought a copy of "Around the World in
>Eleven Years" at an antique store.  The book was written by three
>children who had lived in several countries (including Hitler's
>Germany and Stalin's Russia) in the 30's.  They must have been
>well known, since the book had articles torn out of magazines between
>the pages.  On the inside of the front and back cover were comments,
>almost mini-reviews, by six women who had read the book, apparently
>in sequence, in March of 1937.  Must have been a reading club or
>reading circle.  Never saw that before and wondered if more of
>them were floating around.  Anyone else see this?
>
>marc colten
>

In my little rural school, editions of texts were not updated that often
and used books were passed down for several years.  It was a tradition to
use the inside front and back covers in our senior history text to record
the riddles told by our history teacher, who knew about four riddles and
rotated them.  So this was not an extensive record, nor was it the same
kind of exchange, but it had its merits.  Used history books were prized
above new texts and those who were forced to buy new would borrow a used
one to copy the riddles, not one of which survives in my memory.  I think
that is a valid use of the ends sheets, for that type of book, only.  

Another exception I have allowed is in my copy of a book by a local
writer, who dedicated it to me with high praise of my own writing.  Ego
gratification, pure and simple, and one of my most precious possessions.

Mary Loveless  hoosiers@carson.u.washington.edu
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All of my opinions are self-righteously my own and **certainly** have
nothing to do with the University of Washington.

"I wonder how I'd look in *Madonna's* underwear."  Zippy the Pinhead
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: BL.JYC@forsythe.stanford.edu (Jon Corelis)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Too generic?
Date: 25 Dec 1992 14:36:18 -0800
Organization: Stanford University
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: morrow.stanford.edu

   How about creating a newsgroup for the discussion of books
and literature?  We could call it rec.arts.books.
From: ah@dunaad.co.uk (Alan Hunter)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Morally good hypertext
Date: 24 Dec 92 07:14:05 GMT
Organization: Johnson Hunter Limited

In article <JMC.92Dec23092435@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>>...
>>3. Prefer immediate benefits to hypothetical long range benefits.
>>The theory promising the long range benefits may not be that good.
>
>Alan Hunter replied:
>
>     It is that reasoning which causes all political leaders to
>     push each economic upturn as far as it will go, inevitably
>     giving rise to the next downturn.
>
>Precisely.  The theory that the upturn leads to the downturn or,
>more specifically, what aspect of the upturn leads to a downturn,
>is dubious.  Not clearly wrong - but dubious.

1. I don't believe its the upturn which causes the downturn. Its the way
we push, combined with whatever native state the economy has, that causes
both.

2. On reflection, what you said - don't swap food in the belly for pie in
the sky - is ordinary common sense. It is however used extensively by
everyone from politicians to analysts to justify taking the easy
route/making a quick buck/etc. I guess that's what I object to.

3. Economies seem clearly to have catastrophic aspects. The same trigger
has very different effects when pulled at different times / in different
circumstances.

Merry Christmas,
Alan


-- 
Alan Hunter
Johnson Hunter Ltd
Isle of Islay, Scotland
A.Hunter@dunaad.co.uk          fax: +44-496-2336         voice: +44-496-2286
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: nadel@attatash.aero.org (Miriam Nadel)
Subject: Re: Reading as an addiction (Was: 92 in rabreview)
Organization: /usr/lib/news/organization
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 23:28:13 GMT

In article <1992Dec31.192332.14857@ninja.zso.dec.com> rcrowley@donne.zso.dec.com (Rebecca Crowley) writes:
>Other times this question has come up, I've heard stories from people
>who, when children, sneaked flashlights into bed with them so they
>could read under the covers.  

My brother (proprietor of the Northern California branch of the Nadel
library, while I get Southern California and Mom has Lawn Guyland) and I
had a very odd twist on this.  I don't know which of us figured this out
but we discovered we were less likely to be caught reading in bed by
flashlight if we climbed inside the (zippered) quilt cover to read.
Less light leaked out if you were under the quilt and inside the quilt
cover than if you were just under the covered quilt.  I suppose if my folks
had caught on they might have switched us to blankets but they never said
a word.

I might also note that my very favorite excuse for not doing chores as a
child was "I'm in the middle of a chapter."  One merely has to time this
so that one starts the next chapter before parents ask again and one
can quite effectively avoid mowing the lawn, raking leaves, weeding and other
heinous garden chores until Dad realizes that bribery may be in order and
offers to pay one for doing them.

Miriam Nadel
From: s1mbm@isuvax.iastate.edu (michael bruce mcdonald)
Subject: Re: Education and the Environment by Gregory A. Smith
Reply-To: s1mbm@isuvax.iastate.edu
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 23:52:03 GMT

In article <C0395J.Eow@watserv2.uwaterloo.ca>, msmorris@watsci.UWaterloo.ca (Mike Morris) writes:
>
>                                 Wednesday, the 30th of December, 1992
>
>Responding to a review of _Education and the Environment: Learning
>to Live with Limits_, by Gregory A. Smith, John L. Scott wrote:
>  Ah, good.  Yet another reason to homeschool my children.
>
>Michael McDonald writes:
>  Do you mean to tell me that with generations of kids having been profoundly
>  socialized to blithely accept all sorts of thinks of dubious value (like
>  most of America's wars), you can genuinely get up in arms at the prospect
>  of kids being socialized to "understand the social costs of environmental
>  degradation"?  (Wow! sounds so insidious it must be a Satanic plot or
>  something!)
>  
>  Maybe that jerk Pat Buchanan was right after all, maybe this *is* a war for
>  America's soul, if such socialization can really strike you as "radical."
>  
>I don't know. I thought approximately the same thing as John: There is
>no way I'm going let them carry out their experiments in indoctrination
>on *my* children. It is this rot---together with the fact that there is
>so very much like it already in the schools that most of what my wife and I
>consider real education gets ignored of a necessity---that has us committed
>to homeschooling our children.
>
>                      Mike Morris
>               (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)
>
>
>

Contrary to what John McCarthy said in reply to my post, I truly *am* amazed
at the facile way some folks equate the notion of socialization with
indocrtination.  Socialization is part of any educational process.
Indoctrination has to do not so much with the educational institution as
with the methods of each educator, and I would thank McCarthy not to assume
that I am a proponent of *indoctrination* just because socializing children
to *see* the common-sensical idea that allowing the environment to be
degraded hurts us all strike me as a good thing.

Thus far, the arguments proffered here in favor of homeschooling strike me
as profoundly selfish, as primarily a matter of wanting to ensure that 
children are good little reflections of their parents.  Talk about
indoctrination!

michael mcdonald
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: msmorris@watsci.UWaterloo.ca (Mike Morris)
Subject: Re: Homeschooling
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1993 05:52:32 GMT

                                    Friday, the 1st of January, 1993

Barbara Hlavin writes:
  If I demur at any aspect of home-schooling, it would be on Mark's 
  ground of insufficient socialization.  

Barbara, I wish I had ... a book for every time someone has mentioned
socialization in response to my stating plans to homeschool. I think
it's kind of amazing really that we are so quick to think of spending
8 hours a day in a classroom with 30 other kids our own age as normal.
Or at least as natural.

I suspect for homeschooling to work well, the amount of time
devoted to any sort of formal instruction has to be small. (Reminds
me that an older wife of a nearly retired colleague once told me that
she had had her kids out of school with mono once, had gone to the
school to get the curriculum, had spent two hours a day only in
teaching them, was afraid they'd go back way behind, but when
they went back to school n months later, she was shocked to find
her kids were way ahead of everyone else.) The point is that the rest
of the time is to be spent pursuing all kinds of other interests,
and that socialization will occur through interactions with other kids
(sports, for example) *and* through interaction with other adults.
If it were just mommy or daddy lecturing them for 8 hours, then I'd
agree there'd be a worry, but that's not how it is at all. (By all
acounts.)

Regarding my first paragraph above, I might make a connection
to an earlier thread, where people were talking about books
about ``generations'' and the classification of age groups
into generations. My thought is that it is precisely our
experience of growing up in this very artificial way
(I mean in a block of 30 students all our own age) that
may be at the root of our identification of ourselves as
members of an agist ``generation''.

               Mike Morris
       (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Subject: Re: Wits and Half-Wits (was: *Any* kind of r.a.b. split...)
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Fri, 25 Dec 1992 00:36:40 GMT

In article <1992Dec24.221517.11191@netcom.com> dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) writes:

>Wrong wrong wrong.  You see, Mike, even you sometimes make the mistake
>of attributing uncharitable motives where none are present.  Tom was
>obviously alluding to the crass materialism which too often attends
>Christmas, and was reminding us that education is the most precious
>of gifts.  There, aren't you embarrassed?

Quite so. I missed the eggnog reference.


--Mike



-- 
Mike Godwin,    |"I'm waiting for the one-man revolution
mnemonic@eff.org| The only one that's coming."
(617) 864-0665  |                           
EFF, Cambridge  |                   --Robert Frost
From: jzimm@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Joann Zimmerman)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: For newbies (was:Re: Project B.F.D. (was: An apology))
Summary: here, here, there, there!
Date: 23 Dec 92 22:30:07 GMT
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX

Joan Shields writes:
[many lines, deleted for space considerations]

Normally Joan and I are at least 90 degrees apart in any vector (i.e.,
she may be headed toward the same general area as I am, but from a
totally different origin), but this time I can only sit back and yowl a
resounding "Brava!"

Except that I will add that I am most in agreement with her comments
upon the sharpening of writing and thinking; I find that it has stood
me in great stead as I embark on a second, academic career. (Still in
the embarkation phase, for those who are interested.)


-- 
"Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion
borders on the chaos of memories" 
                                                -- Walter Benjamin
 ...!cs.utexas.edu!ccwf.cc.utexas.edu!jzimm   
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,news.groups
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Subject: Re: *Any* kind of r.a.b split, or at least a *serious* discussion
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 07:25:19 GMT

Cole Kendall <U48073@uicvm.uic.edu>:
>Why not split into:
>
>rec.arts.books     and      rec.arts.booklovers  (approximate title)

Calling it rabl instead of rab.chat doesn't change the basic problem:
The chat doesn't occur in a vacuum.  It tends to spin off from the
core subject matter.  If such a split occurred, the chat would still
originate in rec.arts.books.  The only difference would be that
there would be pressure to move it to rabl.  Net experience suggests
that such pressure would be ignored.

-----
Dani Zweig
dani@netcom.com

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
 Are full of passionate intensity." -- W.B. Yeats
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: bh419@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ted B Samsel)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Mangled song lyrics (was: Cultural Appropriation and the New Age)
Date: 30 Dec 1992 12:22:55 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


Then there's the children's song GLADLY THE CROSSEYED BEAR.....
-- 
Ted....
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: dyer@spdcc.com (Steve Dyer)
Subject: No Wise Man here (Re: *Any* kind of r.a.b split, or at least a *serious* discussion)
Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting, Cambridge MA
Date: Fri, 25 Dec 1992 17:38:05 GMT

If Wise's wildly selfserving and maladroit plea is designed to promote his
cause at the expense of Heather's, he's just shot himself in the foot.
I suspect Heather can at least plead innocence by reason of undirected rage.
Wise, on the other hand, maintains a pretense of reason.

In article <1992Dec25.091537.28480@nevada.edu> wwhitman@nevada.edu (MICHAEL WISE) writes:
>I don't feel I was in error when I characterized Stein as a fat, lazy 
>lesbian with a serious grudge against the more successful Hemingway.[...]
>That she was fat, that she was a lesbian, is hardly in dispute;[...]
>I consider these to be facts, and on a literary subject.

Snort.  Goodness, why didn't you go all the way and say she was a
"fat, lazy, Jewish lesbian..." or a "fat, lazy Jew"?  That she was
fat, lazy or Jewish is hardly in dispute, right? 

Listen, pal: if you say that someone is a "fat, lazy X", it is generally
assumed that "fat", "lazy" and "X" are each of them insults, and you don't
get to weasel out of this by denying that this was your intention, unless
you are a politician, which I guess most petit academics are.  I don't
think that people would feel comfortable reading a line like "fat, lazy Jew"
in any kind of post on r.a.b which pretends to be something other than
hate speech, and I invite those who glossed over your own delicate phrase
to ask themselves what the difference is here.  I also don't know why people
would consider "fat" a suitable adjective in any attempt at literary criticism
that didn't refer to someone's writing style.  Whatever the merits of the
literary argument (and I profess no opinion on this), your description of
Stein was ugly and deserved comment.  Thanks for giving us another opportunity. 

Oh, yeah: Merry Christmas to everyone else who might celebrate it today.

-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer
From: jeremy@castle.ed.ac.uk (Jeremy Henderson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Reading as an addiction (Was: 92 in rabreview)
Date: 1 Jan 93 17:18:50 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

In article <1992Dec31.183207.25805@crd.ge.com> meltsner@crd.ge.com writes:
~
~
~As I was told by a friend when I first got married, and started
~Parenthood is the only way to stop incessant reading.  Janice dropped
~from ~180 a year to ~70 (40 or so for her review column) when Billy
~was born.
~



Abserlootely!! If I devoted 25% of the time to reading that I'm now obliged
to spend preparing and administering feeds, changing nappies, washing small
items of clothing etc. I'd pass Jan Yarnot's yearly tally some time in the
middle of March.

Now I can only read books that lie open without the use of hands, and whose
pages can be turned using a toe, or a nose, or a pencil held in my teeth,
and that are comprehensible to someone who has just been woken up at 4 a.m
-- 
===Jeremy Henderson===jeremy@castle.ed.ac.uk=          

This message cost the net hundreds if not thousands of dollars.
Bloody good value if you ask me.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books