It says here

Mark Mandel Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM
Mon Aug 20 19:49:57 UTC 2001


Is it safe to assume we're all cognizant of the use of "It says here" to
indicate, either literally or figuratively, that the speaker is referring
to some published source of information?

>>>>>
"Adelaide's Lament", from Frank Loesser's "Guys and Dolls"*:

(spoken) It says here:
The average unmarried female,
Basically insecure,
Due to some long frustration may react,
With psychosomatic symptoms,
Difficult to endure,
Affecting the upper respiratory tract.


In other words,
Just from waiting around for that plain little band of gold,
A person can develop a cold.
<<<<<

As I recall, Adelaide is reading the spoken section from a fat book in this
soliloquy.
(Guys and Dolls opened at the 46th Street Theatre on November 24, 1950,
according to http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/albm39.html .)

I recall also its use in Robert A. Heinlein's _Glory Road_, from the early
sixties
(my memory and
http://lists.village.virginia.edu/lists_archive/sixties-l.old/0712.html ).
(This is all from memory now.) Our hero/narrator has just encountered a
dragon whose innards generate methane, which it exhales toward its enemies
and ignites catalytically. In an aside to the reader, he says approx. "It
says here that methane is a colorless, odorless gas" and comments that this
stuff was very far from odorless.

*(from http://members.tripod.com/Point202/GuysandDolls/lament.html
     It says there:
          Copyright © 1997, 1998
          "The Stage Door"
          Amy - a.k.a - Point202
          Pittsburgh, PA
          E-Mail:
          Point202 at hotmail.com
-- but I'll bet the lyrics are copyright through an agency to some(natural
or corporate)body associated with the show.)

-- Mark A. Mandel



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