To compliment the intellectual palaver of this board, we need background music. Perhaps Anu could ad streaming audio of stately classical music, coupling Bach and Mozart with Webster.

Hmm. . .or I could just turn on the radio. . .

Music would be ok with me--
as long as it's optional !!

You could just turn the volume in your speakers all the way down, or just plain off if you don't want to hear it. This is idle talk anyway because it probably won't happen.

jazzoctopus
with that marvellous name you ought to be the one to supply some cool grammatical music apposite to the discussion of words.
minimalist jazz might be good, since the original topic seems to branch out slowly into discussions of life here.

I'd prefer you turn on the radio! Not that I have anything against music, I just prefer download speed!

In order to suit this context, I recommend Rod Piazza & The Mighty Flyers'album "Alphabet Blues" or perhaps Elvis Presley singing "Words" or the old Otis Redding album "Dictionary of Soul."

Greetings, Pa Stevie!

There are times when "The Ying Tong Song", "I'm walking backwards for Christmas", or any of the other songs in that collection, would be more appropriate.

"The Ying Tong Song",


A true classic, a veritable masterpiece - kindly recite in full!

"The Ying Tong Song",
A true classic, a veritable masterpiece - kindly recite in full!

An orthographic representation of such an opus would hardly do justice to the strange and haunting cadences of its primeval melody, Jim.

An orthographic representation of such an opus would hardly do justice to the strange and haunting cadences of its primeval melody, Jim

Jim? You're not glaswegian are you? I have never in my entire life been called "Jim", even though James is my middle name, so I wondered if its use here was as a contraction of the generic glaswegian "Jimmy."

"Jim",

I am certainly not Glaswegian - a fact gratefully acknowledged by all of the residents of that fair city that I have met.

"Jim" was a name in constant use in "The Goon Show" by almost any given character to any other. As in "Hello, Jim", pronounced in the high-pitched, slightly nasal voice that was the hallmark of the Goons.

An analogy is the Londoner's use of "John" as a form of casual greeting to anyone he has not met before (Yes, "he" - I have never heard a female use this form of greeting)

And, yes - I am a sort of Londoner - County of Middlesex in fact, which has long since been absorbed into Greater (!) London.

"Jim" was a name in constant use in "The Goon Show" by almost any given character to any other. As in "Hello, Jim", pronounced in the high-pitched, slightly nasal voice that was the hallmark of the Goons.

Oh for audio! As soon as I read this, I could Bluebottle whining "hello, Jeem" - time to ddust off my cassetes (if they haven't "fallen in de water") and have another listen, thanks

Oh for audio!

Does its lack account for the ommission of "hear" ?

Does its lack account for the ommission of "hear" ?

Mais naturellement - damn your eyes!

- damn your eyes!

I will take that as a compliment - from one who "knows"

I've been looking for a BBC radio archive which, I'm sure exists but is lost in the ever expanding and quite wonderful bbc.co.uk website (check out this week's "Letter from America" - "The problem with English")

In the meantime there are Goom MP3 files featured in this site: http://www.alphalink.com.au/~robertd/GoonShow.html