Write a note to the person above you II

Miss Freckles said:
Dear T.w.t.d.k.a.c.d.e.,

I take it Telmarines regularly bathe in DeNile? I didn't know it even ran through Telmar.

Sincerely,
Freckles
Click to expand...

Uh... I'm not familiar with this river. :D

Glenburne said:
Dear Freckles,

With their thessalophobia, it's a wonder that Telmarines bathe at all. Sopes at least seems to think that he's hygienic, but for all I know, he could be washing his face in sand every morning. And as for violence...

That's only one example.

Sincerely,
Glen
Click to expand...

Thalassophobia, Ms. Spelling Police. And again, it's a fear of bodies of water. A shower or sink is not a body of water.

You must have dug very deep to find that example.

Gondorgirl said:
Glen,

I was enjoying this deep conversation and looking forward to contributing. Then my computer took ten minutes to scroll down the page and let me post and all my thoughts went out the proverbial window. So that tells you what kind of philosopher I am.

GG
Click to expand...

Dear GG,

Thank you for your deep and complex thoughts. I shall enjoy pondering them with a cup of tea and my classical music playing.

So that tells you what kind of a philosopher I am.

Mikespian
 
Dear Sopes,

Phobia names are simply asking to be misspelled. Tholosserphobia? Thelissaphobia? Thilussophobia? The possibilities are nearly endless.

And there are so many examples of you threatening people that it didn't take me very long to dig up that example. The Encyclopedia entry about you (the original, not that propaganda piece you wrote up) tells an even fuller tale.

Sincerely,
Glen
 
Dear Glenburne,

it seems the DLR hacked your account once more. Does this mean that they're keeping you hostage again or are you on he run or are they just using your account and actually have no idea where you're at? I don't want my continent destroyed because of your cat-and-mouse game, alright? It has valuable cultural heritage such as the West Highland Line*, the Colosseum, the Camino de Santiago, and a statue of the Little Mermaid.

With the use of a comma to illustrate my sincerity,
Freckles
__________________________
*Dear inhabitants of the British Isles: Of course you're strictly separate from 'the continent' and by no means part of 'the continent'.**
 
Last edited:
Dear Freckles,

Europe isn't a continent that is particularly good for fugitives. Too many regulations, borders to cross, etc. Most of Asia is gone now. The DLR accidentally blew up the Dome of the Rock as well, but everyone in the Middle East was so busy fighting that no one has noticed yet. Fortunately I was already in South America by that time.

As my account location says, I'm on the run. The DLR have hired a computer hacker to wreak havoc here, but fortunately he's extremely lazy.

Sincerely,
Glen
 
Dear Glenburne,

'wreak havoc' is one of my favorite expressions in the English language, not only because of its semantic proposition but also because it takes me a while to figure out how to spell it but then I invariably get it right, which means I have an innate ability to correctly spell words whose spelling is more or less arbitrary. Thank you for reading through this paragraph of pure self-exaltation which has only a very loose connection to your previous note and would not fit the epistolary genre at all if it wasn't for the salutation and valediction. Then again, the same probably goes for a shocking number of letters.

Sincerely,
Freckles
 
Last edited:
Dear Freckles,

Unrelated letters seem to be the norm in this thread. As for the letter you just wrote, I can only say that, for a paragraph of non-Elizabethan English, you used some very long words. But at least you spelled them all correctly. Spelling is very important.

Sincerely,
Glen
 
Dear Glenburne,

Which long words are you referring to? None of them seem to come close to "Wohnzimmerschränkchen" or "Warnblinkanlage" - words which I use on a daily basis (note the blatant lie; but I couldn't think of a better example on the spot).

I agree that spelling is important - if you want sameness, tyranny, and bloodshed. Because that's what happened after the invention of the printing press. No, let's not look at history before the printing press. Let's just admit I'm right!

Liberté, egalité, fraternité,
Freckles
 
Dear Freckles,

In English, four syllables is a long word. Because the French invaded and messed the language up. Down with the French.

Ah, but there was a gap between the invention of the printing press and the invention of spelling. In that gap, a lot of people were killed in religious warfare. Clearly, the ability to print books easily is deadly when one cannot spell.

Sincerely,
Glen
 
Dear Glenburne,

I find myself actually agreeing with you for once - not about the French, they are nice enough when you get to choose the best of their language and cuisine. People shouldn't be allowed to print, i.e. to publish books, easily. For example on amazon. They should go through the hands of knowledgeable people first, who weigh them (figuratively and later probably literally) and either find them wanting or wanting but filling some important niche in the oversaturated book market.

I think, by analogy, I just expressed disdain for democracy. What do you think about it? (Please make sure the DLR do not get the upper hand answering this note; it would be too predictable.)

Sincerely,
Freckles
 
Last edited:
Dear Freckles,

The DLR believes in democracy as long as the votes of the DLF and his oppressed compatriots weigh as 75% of the total. I'm not sure if that counts as an oligarchy or not.

Yes, I'm afraid you're a hopeless elitist. But I frequently find myself sympathetic with J.R.R. Tolkien, who said he preferred either an anarchy or an unconstitutional monarchy. Not that I particularly want either; but the state of democratic societies doesn't say much for democracy. Then there was the person who said a democracy is the sort of government in which people get what they deserve....

As to the publishing world, I've heard that, with the rise of self-publishing, no one really knows what's going on--not even the publishing houses. It's no wonder, with the way the Internet is going. Of course, some people should be banned from writing books, period, but plenty of them publish the traditional way. Publishing houses are, after all, about money, and junk sells.

Sincereley,
Glen

P.S. Thinking they should be banned, and thinking that banning them is possible without causing other damage, are two different things. I hold to the former. You may now applaud my optimism.
 
Last edited:
Dear Glenburne,

I applaud your optimism (until GG eats either the applause or the optimism).

Personally, I would never trust a book published online. It's unfortunate that sometimes, a good book doesn't get published because the publishers are looking only for a manuscript that fits a very specific format, but if it's such a good book, the writer and all his or her friends should offer it to every publisher ever until it gets published fo real. To me, a book is not a book unless it has a cover and a badly written blurb and you can flip the pages and smell the ink and all that romantic stuff.

I also spend hours on an online forum talking to digital people.

I'm a bad person :( who ends sentences in smilies :D

Mischievously,
Freckles
 
Dear Freckles,

I suppose there are good self-published books out there somewhere (I have yet to be aware of one). But you're right. It usually seems like there was a reason the mainstream publishers didn't want the things.

It has occurred to me that working in a library has the tendency to make one rather cynical about books. Or rather, certain kinds of books. Volunteering in one seems to have done the same thing for D.

Sincerely,
Glen

P.S. Put periods on the end of your sentences, or I will kill the smilies. Every last one.
 
Dear Glenburne,

I don't care about the smilies. They are only tools.

I have grown very cynical about books indeed since I began working in a bookshop. The boss's demand that I read as many of the new publications as possible sounded exciting at first; then I realized that I strongly lean towards books whose authors have been dead for decades, centuries, or millenia, and that the odds of their names turning up in our bookshop are, weeeeellllllll, small. So I suppose working in a library at least you get to be around the dear dead?

I have sold Mere Christianity to a teenager, though, and I did not influence his decision in the least, or put the Imperius Curse on him. He chose it himself! I was the proudest mother in the world. This is a metaphor, I don't think I am or was at any point in time actually his mother.

Two, respectively three, questions for you:
1) Who is D?
2) Have you read any of Andrew Lang's colorful Fairy Books? If yes, how are they?

Sincerely,
Freckles
 
Dear Freckles,

D is MissReepicheep--a mod, though she's not on much. She recently posted a post from her blog on Facebook making fun of young adult novels. Apparently, she has shelved a lot of them at the library.

I haven't read any of Andrew Lang's Fairy Books in full. I think I did edit one for Project Gutenberg years ago, and my main memory is that some of the stories weren't fairy tales at all. Just folktales. I think J.R.R. Tolkien made a similar complaint in "On Fairy Stories"--that Lang had a tendency to include "beast tales" in his Fairy Books, apparently thinking that all stories with unrealistic elements fall into the same category.

True, at least libraries have to keep classics in stock. But I can count on one finger the number of people I have seen borrow The Divine Comedy.... Personally, I think that people who check out classics should get free chocolate.

Sincerely,
Glen
 
Dear Glenburne,

Have more faith in humanity. That being said, I didn't read LWW for the longest time because the picture of the lion on the cover was scary. I was a child, and covers matter.

Sincerely,
Freckles
 
Dear Freckles,

I read the blurb on the back of Prince Caspian, which informed me that the prince found Susan's horn. This so ruined the story that I vowed never to read a blurb again. (That decision held for most of my childhood, since I had bookshelves full of books my father had read as a child. It was beautiful.)

Love,
Lossy
 
Back
Top