"Murphy's Law" (1955)

[Wilson Gray]

On Jul 13, 2005, at 5:47 PM, Mark A. Mandel wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "Murphy's Law" (1955)
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> Wilson reviews:
>>>>
>
> In addition to being a serious scholar of baseball, Dickson is a joker
> and
> possibly also a smoker and a midnight toker. [...] _The Official Rules
> and
> Explanations_. This book purports to be, as its subtitle claims, "the
> original guide to surviving the Electronic Age with wit, wisdom, and
> laughter."
>
> Needless to say, the book is apparently a reference work, but it's
> almost totally filled with sometimes real and sometimes fake sayings,
> including (pseudo)annotations, on a variety of (pseudo)scientific
> topics. These sayings purport to be the rules and explanations that
> account for the various permutations of the "Anti-Midas Touch":
> everything you touch turns to shit.  Or, as Robert Burns put it, "The
> best-laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley."
> <<<
>
> Including in quotation:
>
>         The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men
>         Gang aft agley,
>

When I was a grade-school kid in the '40's, the canonical version
taught us was, "The best-laid plans of mice and men often go astray."
This may be relevant for scholars of the history of dumbing-down in
American education.

> according to http://www.robertburns.org/works/75.shtml
>

Mark, please tell me that you didn't have to look it up! You simply
pulled it out of your ass, right? And you're merely supplying a cite
for my edification, right? ;-)

-Wilson


> (Do I hear a mention of self-referentiality?)
>
> -- Mark
>    (by hand)
>