The Mouse That Roared — and a stream of consciousness
Posted by Nathaniel.
The recent issues with Iran have made me wonder more than a little bit if they’re trying to pick a fight so that we’ll march in and make things better. Just imagine a speech to their people once we leave, “You may think you want more person freedoms, but look how horribly the [big devil] Americans did. You’d much rather have a strict Islamic state, wouldn’t you?”
That made me think of The Mouse that Roared by Leonard Wibberley. If you haven’t read it, it’s about a tiny little country with monetary issues in post-WWII Europe who decides that the way to fortune is to declare war on the US, lose, and then get tons of support. In the end, they accidentally win and much hilarity ensues. It was a great read in middle school.
Anyway, I bought the book from amazon and now they point out other books that would match similar searches. This brings me to The Mouse that Roared by Dwayne Murray Sr. An electrician from New York who now dabbles in thriller novels. The interesting thing here is that Amazon now lists out “Statistically Improbable Phrases” for books. Basically, they’re phrases that should be more or less unique to a given author, clever turns of phrase unique to the book. Dwayne Murray Sr. apparently used the phrase “bully club” several times in his book while no other work of fiction contains that phrase. It kind of makes me wonder what exactly it is… is it a club for bullies to join so they can sit around and discuss proper bullying methods? a club specifically designed to stop a bully in his tracks? or, is it, as I fear, a repeated error in the book because the author doesn’t know what a billy-club is. That answer doesn’t bode well for the book as a whole.
April 16th, 2007 at 4:39 pm Using
While I like the concept of a “bully-club”, as in a club for bullies to perfect their technique, my immediate reaction was that the guy misspelled “billy-club”, as you concluded as well. So, with two out of two smart and arrogant people voting for “mistake: he meant to use an ‘i’” I think he’s in trouble.
April 16th, 2007 at 4:41 pm Using
Oh yeah, and good call regarding The Mouse That Roared - great book and some not-insignificant parallels. I don’t know Iranian leadership is that explicit in terms the goal of American-occupation backlash, but it’s probably not too far off.
April 16th, 2007 at 4:46 pm Using
Yeah, the Iranian connection is a definite stretch. It just came about the other week when they were holding the British folks and I was trying to figure out why in the fuck they’d do something so stupid.
April 17th, 2007 at 11:40 am Using
This doesn’t really fit under my Nazi post, but it has to do with it. Does anyone else find it odd that recreation, the act of going outside and playing, and recreation, making something new as a copy of an old thing, are spelled the same way?
a: This is my recreation jacket.
b: Cool, you wear it when you go jogging with civil war re-enactors?
April 17th, 2007 at 1:44 pm Using
well, i think it’s more properly spelled re-creation in the sense they meant it. but who hyphenates anymore?
April 17th, 2007 at 1:51 pm Using
The little dictionary thing in Dashboard suggests that spelling as the second choice. Oddly, they still suggest that you pronounce it the same way as the outside activity.
And, if you want to see a little joke, go to Dashboard and type in the word “democracy” into the dictionary. Then click over to the thesaurus and see the example phrase that they give you.
April 17th, 2007 at 2:51 pm Using
just to clarify, you mean Dashboard as in the dictionary widget in OSX, not Dashboard as in the admin page of the blog.
but yeah, that’s funny, somebody enjoyed doing that.
April 17th, 2007 at 2:51 pm Using
well, i suppose it depends who you ask. merriam-webster online uses the hyphen and the unique pronunciation. the entries for both words are completely separate.
April 17th, 2007 at 2:56 pm Using
Yes, the dashboard dictionary widget in OSX.
Unfortunately, the dictionary widget shouldn’t be thought of an the end-all authoritative source for spellings and such. In an earlier version of it, two of the diacritic marks were switched.