It's spelt 'peculiar', Skiffle. Peculiar.

Cheers for the stuff on the guns, btw, I sort of glazed over at some of the wils west references after a while and figured you'd fill in the gaps.




Meanwhile, delacuesta - you probably don't know the history about me and titles for guides, so I won't flame you. Let's just say it's a sore point, shall we?



PSD

==========

This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Skiffle,
In the US, I believe potting sheds are potting sheds. A place often used to repot plants; is that what they are there? There are potting benches as well, sometimes in sheds and sometimes not.

I'm not that far in the book so haven't seen how it was used, pardon if I've misunderstood.

Strikes me the title's much funnier as it is anyway - I would suggest leaving it as it is.

Re my earlier comment concerning "Guinzilla" (page 43) _
Jasper uses the Latin name Phoberomys pattersoni for "Guinzilla" on the 'Conspiracy Theorist' postcard, although not in the actual book... Evidently the species was identified at an earlier date in the Nextian world than it was in our own reality.

Before I start reading - wow! I see why you haven't had a chance to reply to my email yet, PSD!

Will now have to find a way of printing off 26 pages in Word and reading it at home....

*applause*

Another couple of bad puns - p42 - Adam Gnusense (I really hated this one) and in the teams, Aubrey Jambe (I liked that one! Tasty...). His first appearance *may* be p100, but I'm not sure.

And I thought Van der Poste was Postman Pat, too.



:--

Do something pretty while you can...

I'm sure Aubrey Jam appears in one of the previous ones, Dante, which is why I didn't explain it, and I really don't think Mr Gnusense really needs an entry...



PSD

==========

This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

PSD - re "flame" and "sore" - I honestly didn't mean to upset. I was truely convinced that you called for a better title; now that I've read your first two lines (top of thread) more carefully, I must admit that the "alternatively" clause could just as well have been irony. Must have been my residual neanderthal genes. Sorry (even though I don't quite see where the sore comes from), and be assured that I greatly admire your guide opus.

If you really meant to say you would have preferred more subjectual feedback: I did try. I researched this side of the North Sea for Van de Poste, whose name intriguingly seems to originate from the Low Countries on first sight; but so far the name Van de Poste turns out to be as unnetherlandish as Van Helsing.



*---

Page 10, re the Winchester Rifle _ It might be the same calibre as the Colt revolver, but wouldn't its intended cartridges be rather longer than the ones meant for the revolver (because the longer barrel made it accurate to significantly greater ranges than was the revolver, so that including quite a bit more propellant in the load was worthwhile)?

Page 32, re Mrs Worthing _ Google gives 80 references to this name, although some of them are actually for Mrs Worthington (as in 'Don't put your daughter on the stage...') but in my opinion none of those look appropriate. In the literary field, there's a character called John Worthing (who invents a brother named Ernest as an alias) in Oscar Wilde's "The Importance Of Being Earnest": Perhaps this mght this be his [subsequent] wife?

Re living in Worthing_ Well, I like living here, and enjoyed it when we used to visit the town on holiday when I was still in my teens as well... It's got a very good main library, for one thing, as well as several smaller ones ;-). As far as the number of rest homes that exist here is concerned, the borough currently has around 100'000 inhabitants so their inhabitants aren't really a numerically significant proportion of the total population... and the proportion of pensioners in the population has actually dropped since its peak, because the older generations of retirees who moved here from London [& other places, mostly further north] are dying off but quite a few of their potential replacements are choosing to settle in sunnier climes such as the Spanish coasts instead. I wonder whether the people who carried out that alleged survey actually compared like-for-like (and also polled people in other towns with significant numbers of retired incomers, such as Bexhill & Eastbourne), or whether they just chose a set of towns about which they themselves already had views and conducted their "surveys" amongst social groups there who were likely to confirm these?

Page 34, re Kapok _ This material was also, if I remember correctly, used at one time for stuffing lifejackets.

Page 38, re the Echidna _ Their natural range also includes New Guinea.

Page 99, re Mother Theresa _ The version of her in the Nextian reality seems to have died at a rather earlier date than did her counterpart on our own Earth.

Page 112, re the Tailor of Gloucester _ Do any of you know whether Beatrix Potter used a traditional story as the basis for this book instead of just making the whole thing up? The house that she used as the main basis for its illustrations, by the way, is now a museum.

Page 126, re 'The Midwich Cuckoos' _ And this book was adapted into a film, under the title of 'Village of the Damned'.

Page 133, re the Ford Edsel _ This was named after Henry Ford's son Edsel, but I don't know who or what HE was named after...

Page 195, re Torquemada _ Wasn't he included in an official list of proposed candidates for beatification (the step before canonisation) by the Roman Catholic Church a few years ago?

Page 209, re antimacassars _ So-called because the most widely-used [men's] hair-oil in those days was 'Macassar Oil', apparently... This took its name from a place called Macassar, situated in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), which was presumably the source of one of its main ingredients.

Page 237, re 'Wilson, Lonsdale and Partners' _ My personal suspicion is that these might be Harold Wilson (in our reality a Labour politician, Prime Minister of the UK for two periods during the 1960s & '70s) and Gordon Lonsdale (in our reality a "Canadian businessman", in London during the '60s, who was eventually revealed to be in fact a Russian & a KGB spy...).

Page 239, re 'ENSA' _ Due to the quality of many of the acts this agency was widely known amongst the armed forces as "Every Night Something Awful".



Post Edited (08-17-04 20:21)

Simon wrote:
Page 239, re 'ENSA' _ Due to the qulaity of many of the acts this agency was widely known amongst the armed forces as "Every Night Something Awful".


Shouldn't that be quality? Or is there a new spelling rule involved?

Simon wrote:

> Page 10, re the Winchester Rifle

No, it was the same calibre as the cartridges were readily available - it's the longer barrel that gives it more accuracy - the length of the bullet has no bearing upon it.

>
> Page 32, re Mrs Worthing

Mrs Worthington is quite obviously spelt very differently - more research needed, one fears.

>...whether they just chose a set of towns about
> which they themselves already had views and conducted their
> "surveys" amongst social groups there who were likely to
> confirm these?

What? Like young people? Worthing, like it or not, has a reputation for being the home of the terminally old or the very dull. I thought this might be important for the reference...

>
> Page 34, re Kapok _ This material was also, if I remember
> correctly, used at one time for stuffing lifejackets.

Not sure this adds much...

>
> Page 38, re the Echidna _ Their natural range also includes New
> Guinea.

Actually, the long-beaked is found in New Guinea, the short-beaked in Australia. Lost in editing.
>
> Page 99, re Mother Theresa _ The version of her in the Nextian
> reality seems to have died at a rather earlier date than did
> her counterpart on our own Earth.

Living in Calcutta, it may have felt longer...
>
> Page 112, re the Tailor of Gloucester

I've seen no mention of any source tale for it. If anyone has a copy I'd appreciate a decent synopsis, as I'm too lazy to find my sister's copy from the loft.
>
> Page 126, re 'The Midwich Cuckoos' _ And this book was adapted
> into a film, under the title of 'Village of the Damned'.

Well, granted, but I fugured where possible references to literature should take preference to film adaptations, unless there's a pressing need.

>
> Page 195, re Torquemada _ Wasn't he included in an official
> list of proposed candidates for beatification (the step before
> canonisation) by the Roman Catholic Church a few years ago?

What? Beatified for setting crossword puzzles?!? The reason not to include this nugget is my inbox - it'd get inundated from a load of people upset about 'anti-Catholic bias' if I made the inevitable comment...

> Page 209, re antimacassars _ So-called because the most
> widely-used [men's] hair-oil in those days was 'Macassar Oil',
> apparently... This took its name from a place called Macassar,
> situated in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), which was
> presumably the source of one of its main ingredients.

That is the most obscure fact I've learnt today.
>
> Page 237, re 'Wilson, Lonsdale and Partners' _ My personal
> suspicion is that these might be Harold Wilson (in our reality
> a Labour politician, Prime Minister of the UK for two periods
> during the 1960s & '70s) and Gordon Lonsdale (in our reality a
> "Canadian businessman", in London during the '60s, who was
> eventually revealed to be in fact a Russian & a KGB spy...).

Best suggestion so far, but not convincing, I'm afraid.

=================

Dalcuesta - I can't email you, so can't explain. Drop me a mail and I'll share, otherwise I an ssure you no offence was seriously taken. Check out the dictionary definition of 'decomposed' and you'll see where the title's coming from.



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

SLIGHTCAP _
Correction noted.

Fair enough - just that you included Alf Widdershaine and Julie Aseizer.



:--

Do something pretty while you can...

has no one else noticed anything about St Zvlkx?
it was bugging me all through reading it - i was sure it was a drug of some sort that i'd heard of (just like to point out that i certainly have never used it) and then i remembered it's got to be zovirax - which is used to treat genital herpes! good one jasper!

Erm, i personally think that there's a long way from Zvlkx to Zovirax, which btw is used to treat any herpes, not only the genital one.



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.

(N. Chomsky 1957)

You're probs right V.V, it was just a little something that popped into my head. As for my misguided medical knowledge, i can only plead total ignorance!

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant!



-----------------------------------------------

The Xanadu revival starts HERE

I suspect that 'ZVLKX' is a combination of letters that Jasper got stuck with at the end of a Scrabble game... ;-)

PSD _

Page 10, re the Winchester Rifle _
I've done a bit more research. Yes, okay, there was at least one model of the Winchester Rifle that was designed to take the same types of ammunition that were commonly used in Colt [& some other makers'] revolvers so that people using both types of weapon would only need to carry one type of cartridge: The 1873 model was originally built to take the .44-40 round, and subsequently also made available in versions that would take either .38-40 or .32-20 rounds instead... However the normal variations on the 1876 Winchester (which you suggested might be the model meant in this scene) were chambered for more powerful rounds (the number after the hyphen is the number of "grains" weight [@ 7000 grains to the pound] of propellant included...) such as the .45-75*, the .50-95 (from 1879 onwards) or the .45-70 (from 1886 onwards) instead... And several other rifles of the period did (as I suggested, in my original comment, was the case) also take higher-powered ammunition than that which was primarily meant for handguns, too, for example the "trapdoor" Springfield which was the US Army's standard rifle from 1873 until after 1900 was designed to fire .45-70 rounds whilst the "Sharps Big 50" (which was favoured by buffalo-hunters) took the .50-90 cartridge...
Oh, and in your original entry for the Guide you also said that "The Winchester rifle was semi-automatic – pulling lever ejected the spent cartridge and loaded a fresh one": However the term "semi-automatic" more properly applies only to those firearms in which firing one round loads the next one automatically (through some mechanism utilising either the gas produced by the propellant's combustion or the physical recoil) without the user having to operate any lever, bolt, pump or whatever. (This differs from a "fully-automatic" weapon, such as a machine-gun, in that the trigger still has to be pulled separately for each shot and can't just be held down for sustained fire...) The normal definition for firearms where the user has to operate a lever, bolt, pump or other mechanism in order to load a new round from the magazine is in fact "repeating".

(* The ".45" cartridge used in [one version of] the Colt Peacemaker revolver was less powerful than this rifle cartridge, containing only the same 40-grain charge as the slightly narrower ".44-40" round.)

Page 32, re Mrs Worthing _
You know that "Mrs Worthington" is quite obviously spelt very differently, and I know that this is so, it's Google that (at least when the site in question places a hyphen after the "g" in the longer name...) seems to have trouble recognising this difference...
One of the references given by Google was to a fictional character named 'Mrs Worthing' who appeared in a silent movie [from 1926] by the title of 'Pleasures of the Rich': I doubt whether this was who Japer meant, but he does have connections with the film industry (albeit only more recently than that particular work's production ;-) after all...

Page 126, re 'The Midwich Cuckoos' _
Well, granted, but I figured that explaining that this film was derived from that book would give any people who've seen the film but not read the book at least a hint of what the book _ and thus the reference in 'Something Rotten' _ was about.



Post Edited (08-20-04 14:50)

Simon - I'm really, really not interested. My guide: my right to apply heavy irony, sarcasm, and expose my prejudices with my tongue rammed firmly in my cheek. And my right to ignore totally the pedantic details concerning the bloody winchester rifle. It's a gun, it fires bullets, and it turns up a lot in Westerns. That's as far as the interest goes.



PSD

==========

This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.