Hijacked... Re: [thechat] Fighter plane's laser may blind civ ilians

Martin Burns martin at easyweb.co.uk
Tue Jul 30 02:55:00 CDT 2002


On Mon, 29 Jul 2002, Joel Canfield wrote:

> --
> [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
> > Seen that. Are you telling me that *one* movie could cause so
> > many people to adopt that style?
>
> See comments below.
>
> > My brother was a Top Gun nut. He rented the movie some 10
> > times because he loved it so much. Of course, he was 6 years
> > old at the time.
>
> Exactly the target demographic.
>
> No, don't see *these* comments; see *your* comments. How many people does it
> take, renting that same movie 10 times (or buying the famous 'all day
> ticket' on PayPerView) to make stuff like this part of the language.

While that's a factor, I'd also suggest that the movie reflected current
practise in many areas - it's a form I certainly used in speech a long
time before TopGun. And it's not used in the sense of a quotation (as per
Inigo Montoya)

Now transferring it to *writing* in the canonical "*cough*foo*cough*"
form, now *that's* interesting. And perhaps it's something that the jargon
file should look at.

Cheers
Martin

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