Anyhoo, I want Frogspawn back. Traditions, yanno. :)

<Somedays I play so badly that my level is 1000 points lower. Results bear this out, and I have no way of telling in advance which kind of day it is.>

I have just recently come to terms with the fact that my "phone" (and I don't use scare quotes loosely) is not a phone at all but a powerful computer the likes of which would have been hard to imagine in the days of 16k mainframes the size of a car.

Coulda said 'duplicity' there, but I dint.

(After L. Cohen. Inspired by a would-be friend of the martyr who produces more howlers than a troop of monkeys.)

The flames, they followed Ajay Baggin
As vicious trolls enjoyed the slaggin’.
No shield to keep the Troop at bay,
No Droit de Seigneur, as we say.
Maitre de la Vie, his final breath
Was close, and hot, and scorched to death.

“And who are you?” he almost swore,
“I thought I’d placed you on Ignore!”.
“Oh, I’m Fire”, I replied
“My annotations cannot be denied.”

“Yes, I’m Fire, and we’re well met.
Think you’ve been roasted?
You’ve seen nothing yet.”

His Hobbit hairs began to singe
As from the flames he tried to cringe.
His little Hobbit voice cried out
“Oh Lord, why Me?” he tried to shout.
It sounded like a tiny whine
His Lord was on another line.

“You need to ask?” said Father Flame.
“Look at your posts, your user-name.
The sin of pride is no big deal
Out of proportion to the pain you feel.”

“But Fire sees the ironic side
And Fire will have you as his Bride.
Yes, Fire sees the ironic side
Of those who, blinded by their Pride
Call imprecations down upon the Troop
For conquering the depths to which you stoop.”

“Yes, Fire enjoys the irony
And now it’s only you and me.
A burning Hobbit on a pyre
Embraced by his true lover, Fire.”

“Are you tryin’ to make fun o’ me?”
He quoted Deuteronomy.
And then – too late for even that,
I gave the Hobbit’s corpse a final pat.

“Farewell”, I said, “Old friend, old foe,
I’ll watch your spirit, watch it go
To places where, I rather fear,
The flames are even more severe.”

I've heard that the late Christopher Hitchens had the same motto framed above his desk. Which is plausible.

I can see how other interpretations are possible, but that's mostly the Wodehouse genius.

Insert couplet near the end, eg after 'Deuteronomy' ...

<I have not seen a sicker man
Since Fire consumed The Wicker Man>

I suppose I could try something post-apocalyptic, but once you've seen one post-apocalypse you've seen 'em all.

I suppose it is, rilly. I have *met* consistent people, but I should accept that they're the weird ones.

<Unless, maybe, there are two kinds of normal? Our kind and the other kind?>

Somebody takes an unknown drug (this bit is PK Dick) which has no obvious effect (like Pynchon's Theobromine, which causes very slight but plausible hallucinations).

Our hero - call him Meisswerk - then finds himself speaking a language nobody else knows. (Insert own sources).

He embarks on a quest, which leads him, after many adventurers with torturers and Big Pharma, to a ski lodge. Behind it stands the ancient monastery of Tchom, where the monks have spoken the same uncorrupted language for 10,000 years.

It's a different language to Meisswerk's, of course. We're on Chapter 1 here, yanno.

A staple diet of the London poor in the 17th century, they declined along with cheap fish markets ... and eventually returned as a sign of 'posh'.

Posh my Royal Irish Erse, as Joyce nearly said.

"I been caught and brought back all but once ..."

<Ohio> That Harvey link might *also* have been unsettling during the Klu Hunt.

Don didn't mince his words.

BTW, didya know that the late North Korean Dear Leader invented hamburgers? In Korean, he called it "Meat between Two pieces of Bread". The word 'meat' has some ambiguity, and the great Norwegian explorer Roald McDoald would not have been happy.

<Don didn't mince his words.>

Oh, veally?

<Anyone capable of yawning at Wodehouse would eat an oyster with non-biodegradable plastic airline cutlery. And like it.

Just saying. Me, I wouldn't eat the oyster in the first place. Too dangerous, apart from the bodily fluids analogy.>

LOL...! And here I thought an "oyster" was a particularly bad pun. ;p

<SF scenario #23104 [...] TBC ... ??>

Uh, well. 'Frogspawn' was never really original: I stole it from William Hartston.

'Musee Imaginaire' was used by the writer Alex Trocchi, who stole it from somebody French. Maybe Cocteau.

But the final 's' is original, and possibly the 'des'.

So the Earth goes round the sun. So the orbits get counted, and the counting system in widest use has its turnover point tonight. So what?

We do, however, extend our best wishes to the people of Samoa, who have jumped from one side of the date line to the other, and where *nothing* happened on December 31st.

We extend good wishes to everyone, really -- though those wishes might not always be 'good' as you understand it.

Despite our dislike of ritual, we are essentially a hypocrite, or an unknown number of hypocrites. So we shall put a paper hat on our vitriol and dance.

We stole that, too, from Mr Cohen, who promised to place a paper hat on his concussion and dance. We don't seem to be concussed yet, however.

- The Management of the Imaginary Museum of Frogspawns.

Me? Oh, I only work here. I'll probably be reading a book when 2012 rolls around. At most, I may murmur to myself "Should Old Aquinas be Forgot? Yes, yes, absolutely".

Happy New Year! :)