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I thought it would be appropriate to share this breaking news. Apparently we Americans have had our citizenship revoked by the Queen. As far as I can tell, spelling is her major beef with us.
Oh, that and the tea. Man, she sure carries a grudge.
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That's being passed around email fwd lists in Europe. Without giving Clease credit, of course. I received it from a friend of mine from Prague. Very funny. Posts: 184 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
Hm. This has been doing the rounds on the net for a while; no idea if John Cleese (not Clease) originated it.
Unfortunately, amusing though it is, it actually sheds some light on British prejudices. The "aluminium"/"aluminum" debate is a case in point. As I understand it, "aluminum" was its original name (as provided by whoever first isolated it), but in the UK someone decided that, to make it "fit in" with most of the other elements, it should end in "ium" rather than just "um". There's a lot of linguistic stuff like this - British people commonly have a go about Americans calling autumn "fall". But in fact, "fall" predates "autumn" in English usage; for some reason we dropped "fall" and adopted the French "automne". And so on and so forth...
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I only know this piece SOUNDS like John Cleese, so I'm inclined to believe it's his. I thought with all the recent discussion we've had recently about spelling differences between the USA and the entire rest of the English-speaking world, this article would be particularly amusing.
However, I don't fancy Tony Blair any more than I do ol' Dubbya in charge of politics. On the other hand, I don't see that Canada is any more stable at the moment, given the coup in progress there. Is there anyone in Australia capable of ruling the world? Or do we need to outsource? Monaco has a new ruler. They seem to like him. Maybe he would freelance.
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If we're going to be run by someone, I vote for the Japanese. I can learn Japanese and finally understand Anime in its original language. And I can watch it when it comes out, not at the mercy of fansub groups.
We'll all get discounts on the electronics and cars we actually buy. Where I live, I see more German, Italian, and Japanese cars than American. It's kind of funny that that list uses German cars.
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Google, when I put "John Cleese" and "Declaration of Revocation" into it, said there were over 108,000 matches (with the link posted here coming up first). It does not seem to be on his official site, though I found it difficult to navigate around it and may have missed it.
It does sound like his work, which proves nothing. Short of putting the question directly to Cleese, or tracking this down to its original source, I know of no way to confirm actual authorship.
(I've usually enjoyed Cleese's work throughout his career, though I'm hardly on the same side politically...I find this true of most of the Pythons as well.)
posted
Addendum: the earliest appearance I can track down online would seem to be sometime in February 2005, on something called "The Autonomous." Maybe it appeared before that, in a print magazine.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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