I shed a tear over Jazzo's sorry story, but I heard it differently, from a reliable source...
There once was a bright young man who went to the hills of Minnesota to live with and care for his sick old aunt after her husband passed away. Being an orderly person by nature, he cleaned the cottage meticulously, chopped firewood and cooked her three tasty meals a day. After years of this work, he found he was becoming exhausted and began to take respite from the housework - initially short rests but gradually longer and longer - by perusing his aunt's large collection of dusty old tomes about language, poring over the seemingly endless supply of obscure words he found therein and marveling at the linguistic fun of it all.
Over the years he gradually cared less and less for his aunt, and more and more for his words, to the point where the old lady's health declined, until she eventually died. By then, however, the man's addiction to his hobby was so great that he did not even notice her death. Her body gradually decomposed, rodents fed upon her flesh, and one day a bear tried to make off with her remains, but the body became caught and the animal had to abandon the effort, leaving the broken skeleton slumped against an outside wall of the cottage.
A passing hunter spotted the body and called the local police. The sheriff, a French detective named Poirot, and his deputy duly arrived, to find the man inside the cottage, his nose buried in a large book. After a cursory investigation of the scene, the following conversation took place:
Sheriff (yawning and stretching): Deputy, read this man 'is rights, and arrest 'im for the murder of this woman. It's clear what's 'appened 'ere. 'E's killed 'er by throwing 'er body against the wall, he's 'acked off 'er flesh and left 'er lying 'ere as some sort of morbid trophy. For this despicable crime, 'e'll be flogged, imprisoned, maybe worse.
Accused Man: Cease your
stultiloquy** and your
pandiculation, you
vermiform unipotent anachorism. This is sheer
whigmaleerie. You wouldn't know the truth if you
tumped it over. I came here in
antemosiac times to care for this
relict. For years I have been truly
ruly, I have made her
sipid meals, despite my
defatigable disposition. Do you think my
thanatophilia is so great that I would
spanghew my aunt to death,
excarnate her body and leave the evidence there for all to see! I am innocent! So your
vopulatory plans are not only
delible, they are full of
inconcinnity. Here's what really happened...
Sheriff: Enough of this nonsense! Deputy, 'andcuff 'im.
Deputy: You want me to charge him?
Sheriff: Book'im. And I want to pursue a civil case against 'im for libel.
Deputy: You want me to instigate the necessary legal actions?
Sheriff: Yes.
[Pointing at the man] Sue'im. ---
The name
Sue'im stuck, although the court stenographer struggled with the spelling. Since nobody, not even the learned judge could understand more than a few words of his testimony, Tsuwm was found guilty of the murder, but was released on the grounds of diminished responsibility through word-induced insanity, on an undertaking that he never again appear in public. Thus Tsuwm became a recluse, his world restricted to just two sources of pleasure - the library which he inherited from his aunt, and his connection to the "real" world of words via his Internet connection.
**Acknowledgement to
http://members.aol.com/tsuwm/, for those who have no idea what
I'm talking about.
