Americana Poly-Phonica

Waiting in my car outside an airport this evening, I heard a couple of great quotations on a Radio 4 literary quiz programme...

"A philosopher is a blind man in a dark cellar at midnight looking for a black cat that isn't there. He is distinguished from a theologian, in that the theologian finds the cat. He is also distinguished from a lawyer, who smuggles in a cat in his overcoat pocket, and emerges to produce it in triumph." William L. Prosser, "My Philosophy of Law," Cornell Law Quarterly, 1942

This tempting opportunity to isolate and pick on David Weinberger, AKMA and soon-to-be Mom Denise Howell in one fell swoop, was one that was much too good to pass up here.

Then there was this great quote about Richard Nixon from a previous Whitehouse resident...

"Richard Nixon is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he'd lie just to keep his hand in." Harry S. Truman

All this American referencing inspired me to kill the remaining minutes waiting for my inbound pick-up by telephoning numerous bloggers, the numbers of whom I'd long since added to my mobile phone's address book. Frank Paynter whom I missed (in more than one way) got a stumbling, mumbling and pathetic sounding voicemail, Jeneane and George Sessum got me rambling on about the state of blogging and Ann Craig shared stories of the now legit Marek ( "your papers are in order, move along." ) J and his forthcoming trip to Seattle next month.

Frankly, I can think of less interesting ways to kill half an hour.

Comments

[fp]

I miss you too Gary... not in a biblical way you understand. But I miss you.

[AKMA]

But it’s right there!

[Denise Howell]

Dang, is that what that racket is! (And here I thought I was with child.)

[Stu Savory]

Tiniest possible remark : You missed one in the dark room, Gary. Schr?dinger. But neither he nor I are sure whether he found the cat alive.

Stu :)

[Marek J]

Well, hello all you good people in different time zones. Gary, I wore a t-shirt I got from your cafepress link "blog is a four letter word" and somebody at Starbucks (as if were else would I be getting my coffee?) said to me: Wow! this is a cool shirt. To which I said. This is from Gary Turner.

So I wonder if your name gets spoken in a concrete jungle of Dallas Texas does a tree fall down in London Forest?

[Gary Turner]

You put a smile on my face, Mr J.

[Marek J]

Be Warned Mr Turner, I have your phone number and you don't know the time of the day or the night when that phone is gonna ring and it will be your time to have the laughter of your life expanding into infinity,my dear friend.

[jeneane]

GARY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it was so good to hear your voice. you sounded neither southern nor like a creditor, which took me completely off guard, since most phone voices--except for bloggers--sound like the former or the latter.

SHIT! So good to hear you driving along on the other side of the world.

MAREK I have the same shirt from gary. Down here I get strange looks. I once wore it to jenna's school. I think they found it inappropriate, although I'm quite sure they think blog is somehow short for blowjob or blowgob or something.

And perhaps it is.

[Ann Craig]

Get this: I answer my phone to hear Cousin Cooter with a BAD Redneck accent on top of his Scottish/English lilt. . . very funny.

And I comment now on my 'Brick Replacement'. I'm getting it set up and will post on my blog for the first time later tonight! Cool, huh?

[Gary Turner]

British Telecom just wrote to me to say that "we've noticed that you sometimes call the USA" and so they've lowered my tarrif to 5p per minute.

This means an hour will only cost me ?3

Look out USA, Cousin Cooter's coming to a telegraph line near you, soon.