On the Quantum Nature of Linguistic Fame—A Reply to Slater—Cadwallader Colden SpecGram Vol CLXVII, No 3 Contents EtymGeo™—Weird Little U.S. Towns, Part I—The SpecGram Puzzle Elves™

Review of John Stuart Mill and the Temple of Doom

Vervet Vandiver Vanlandingham-Vanderveer
Lecturer, School of Linguistic Appreciation and Dialectal Dialectics
University of Even More Northern British Columbia, Atlin

This weekend I went to see the new high-spectacle action-adventure film, John Stuart Mill and the Temple of Doom. While the special effects were noteworthy, I was most impressed by the reflorescence, if not recrudescence, of Hollywood linguistics. Intended as a high-brow response to the recent Sherlock Holmes movies, this film begins with the hero recovering from his once-famed nervous breakdown by defeating Tennyson in a poetry slam during the Great Exhibition; while the rest of the audience thrilled to the CGI recreation of the Crystal Palace, I was enthralled by the fast-paced exchanges of Cockney and Geordie in iambic pentametertruly a treat for our culturally denuded age! The climax of the film should, if justice is to be served, enter popular culture with the hero’s unforgettable taunt, “I warrant you’ll die unsatisfied, pig!” as he defeats Thomas Carlyle (played by up-and-coming Birmingham actor Vince Pence-Schantz) in a sword fight on the ramparts of his home at Pitsligo Castle.

If this film succeeds at the box office, the producer and director have promised to film a prequel of sorts, Oliver Wendell Holmes and the Jest-So Storyteller, and if the film under review is any indication, that projected film should do for antebellum New England what this film does for Victorian England. I thus urge all my readers to go to see this film early and often. After the disastrous missteps of The Passion of the Christ, which included such howlers as medieval Aramaic spoken where koine Greek would have been used, and Apocalypto, in which the dialectal situation of the pre-Columbian Mayan world was simply butchered, it was a joy to behold the American film industry return to form for the finest treatment of English dialects since George Cukor’s Gaslight.

On the Quantum Nature of Linguistic FameA Reply to SlaterCadwallader Colden
EtymGeo™Weird Little U.S. Towns, Part IThe SpecGram Puzzle Elves™
SpecGram Vol CLXVII, No 3 Contents