[net.sf-lovers] It was a Boojum, you see...

michael@cit-vlsi (08/03/85)

From: michael@cit-vlsi (Michael Lichter)

	Melinda Berkman asks:

	> Does anyone know where "I tell you once, I tell you twice, 
	> what I tell you three times is true" is from?

	Well, I hate to rip an epic poem apart like this, but my
	friend who has the whole thing memorized talks much faster
	than I can type.

		"Just the place for a snark! I've said it thrice;
		 What I tell you three times is true."

	is a fragment of 'Fit the First' of 'The Hunting of the Snark'
	by Lewis Carrol, who is an oft quoted and generally ripped off target
	of unscrupulous SF writers.  

	In answer to another question, unless I'm mistaken, 'Operation
	Chaos' is a terrible novel by Roger Zelazny where a child with
	great congenital magic powers living in a parallel world which
	long ago buried technology in exchange for magic is traded with
	an earth child with engineering on the brain.  The former is
	called back to his birthplace to save it from the machines and
	bad will of the latter.  My copy had a lot of pictures of the
	heroine running around in a brass bikini.  

	In answer to yet another note, I must say that 'Cocoon' displays
	some of the fuzziest thinking ever to hit the silver screen.  I
	won't complain about Ron Howard's soppy soppy sentimentality.  I
	mean, why bother?  Now, we know that it was not accident that

		< < < SPOILER ( I guess ) > > >

	ILM produced a new set of aliens that carry a big set of floodlights
	around with them wherever they go, and look something like a 
	cross between E.T. and our friends from Close Encounters (with
	some Tinkerbell thrown in, too).  I guess what bothered me the most
	was that one of these aliens was a voluptuous Tahnee Welch and one
	a huge guy (sorry, whoever you are, I don't remember your name) and
	yet when they take off their micron-thick skins, they're all the
	same size and look exactly the same.  Is she really female?  Do they
	have sexes?  Two?  Five?
	There are a lot of arbitrary decisions about what the aliens can and
	can't do.  They can travel across stars with their flying saucer 
	(that's right!), yet they can't swoop down on the sea, pick up a
	few friends, and ride off into the sunset.  Their people were stranded
	in the first place because they were a `ground crew' and yet there's
	no ground crew when the rescue crew takes off.  I'm too disgusted 
	to go on...

	Michael Lichter