Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 19:58:36 -0500 (EST)
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Got your vocabulary right here....was: Re: The New Yorker on Battlestar Galactica
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

"Michael Walsh" <MJW at press.jhu.edu> wrote:
> http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19961017

Interesting.  I first heard that word -- the verb "dis," short for
"disrespect" -- in prison in the '70s.  That dictionary says "the
first examples are found in the early 1980s."  I wonder if I should
email them a correction.

I still think of it solely as prison slang.

As for media SF, it's true that it has a problem with willing
suspension of disbelief.  Last weekend I saw the new King Kong.  Sure,
I can believe in economy-sized apes, bugs that are best fought with
machine guns, and present-day dinosaurs.  But I can't bring myself
to believe there is any such place as Skull Island.  If there was, I
would have gotten spam from there.  Probably from someone claiming to
be King Kong's widow.

In other news, if by some odd chance you should have occasion to use
electricity today, or to wear bifocals, take a moment to give thanks
to Ben Franklin, who turns 300 today.  He's also celebrated as the
father of cryonics.  And of Daylight Saving Time.  In his spare time,
he founded the Post Office.