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Nonrapist English

Seeing as how my style is being parodied by the intelligentsia around here, I will make an effort to speak clearly and coherently. I will use complete sentences. I will not stack words one atop the other, nor will I drift off into fits of random phrasing. English is our mother; as such, she deserves to be respected, or at least, not raped.

As I so often do.

I admit my guilt in this matter, in a forum where such admission is not in any way legally binding. After all, in the past I have admitted myself to be an alien, a perl script, a figment of the collective world unconsciousness, a secret master, a zen buddhist, Sister Mary Harold of Cincinnatti, Lord Zinfandel, and Phyllis, so I don't think I have the slightest chance of anything I say being believed. Nevertheless, we cannot take chances in such important matters. In order to provide prima facie evidence of my own lack of sound mind and body, I provide the following:

I don't like goats.

There. That should be enough ready lunacy to content all but the most depraved disciples of the art and science of email writing. Most of you consist of those fortunates, but I am speaking to the ones who are simply tools of one of the many vast world conspiracies out there, and they are easily contented by a nod and a wink in the direction of oddity. Simple souls. The prevalence of twisty minds on this list causes them great amounts of grief, and the occasional suicide. For, by their very natures, chaos and order are irrevocably opposed, and when a representative of one attempts to infiltrate the sanctums of the other, inevitable corruption ensues.

I digress, however. The title of this email does have some actual relevance to the contents herein. I do, indeed, have some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that I have winnowed through the emails of the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the month of February, and am committed to continuing. You may expect to receive the quotes for that month some time during the next week.

The bad news is twofold. Firstly, there is a marked tendency towards declension in the quality of the quotes themselves. This tendency may reverse itself, as is my fervent hope, but I give you all fair warning that you may not find the quote digest to be all that you had hoped, i.e. a cure for all the world's ills in the form of enough of the best medicine to gag a goat. On the other hand, you may, as I find myself to be getting more and more picky in my old age.

Secondly, I have been writing a long email, and the element of inspired lunacy that I usually possess is all but absent entirely. If ghost read beyond the first paragraph, he has almost certainly given up in deep disgust by now. Ce'st la vie.

Oh English, language of grace and poetry, I now leave my reverent state towards you, and re-enter the rapist phase. Adieu.