CAMBRIDGE

[ODIN <NPARRY -at- COLGATEU -dot- BITNET>]

So, I'm reading along, following the thread of argument elegantly presented in
proper English by Mr. Shires, not knowing it's Mr. Shires or Ms. Robinson, not
really knowing who it is, and I keep thinking, this is not right, this is just
not right, there's something foreign about this, something slightly alien to
this argument, something odd.

I'd just read my own contribution, arguing cost-time benefit, coming up just
short of using the words "neurosis' and "lockjaw" to describe the results I
have observed in the workplace that may be attributed to the marginal
inefficiency of sweating over the last lonely misplaced comma when there's real
work to be done - call it "comma coma," if you will, or institutional
Prufrockianism: "Do I dare to eat a peach?"

I'm thinking, if we adopt Mr. Shire's standards, we'll put the heart of
business communication into closed system feedback loop, the pump will keep
pumping against such stiff and inflexible valves, that no blood will circulate,
the system will shut down, and the heart of intention will arrest in a
quivering perpetual fibrillation.

The cost of the last one percent approximation to perfection in grinding the
lens is greater than the cost of the first ninety-nine percent, I'm thinking.
Do we really need or want to tack that cost onto the cost of goods sold?

There's something I'm missing here, I'm thinking.  So I get to the end of the
post with that in mind and I read the sig: "Harlequin Ltd., Barrington Hall,
Barrington, Cambridge, ENGLAND."  Cambridge, not the University of Alabama
where football is the campus language of record (and even "football" isn't
really football).  Cambridge, not Syracuse University, where English is a
second language, and the undergrads all wear their caps on backward, and never
tie their hightop shoes.  Cambridge!

And I, the son of a teamster (can you tell from my linguistics?) am thinking "I
knew there was something just a little off about that Jay Gadsby fellow."

Now before you torch me to a crisp for cultural bigotry (in reverse?), my point
is that there is proper English, and there is workaday English, and I want
Cambridge to stay right where it is as the tower and defender of the King's
English.  I want it there as a tower rising above the babel.  I want Cambridge
as the ideal, and I want Mr. Shires to protect Underhill against Sauron and all
other berserkers of the high elven speech.

But here in farm country, albeit so close to the halls of Colgate, I want us to
listen to the speech of the workman and tolerate the odd missppelling of the
grocery store clerk, and the minimum wage laborer.  Cambridge must remain
Cambridge, so that we'll know how far off the mark we are.  But the towers of
the hallowed halls must not be used as the lcation of lightening rods to drraw
the wrath of the Dons down on the commonfolk.

Norm
npArry -at- colgateu -dot- bitnet
nparry -at- center -dot- colgate -dot- edu