Bourke B. Hickenlooper

Sat Oct 4 01:26:48 UTC 2008

"Bourke B. Hickenlooper" is surely a strong candidate for the funniest name of ANY US Senator ever. Other candidates?

He was a very popular Taft Republican of his day (somewhere to the right of Eisenhower).

Is the current mayor of Denver any kin?

By the way, Blackberry spell check does not recognize "Taft"--a Republican president (they suggest "tart").
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-----Original Message-----
From: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>

Date:         Thu, 2 Oct 2008 19:53:34
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject:      Re: [ADS-L] Palin isn't in MS Word's dictionary (and neither was
              Obama)

I remember Senator Hickenlooper. His was one of the weird,
white-ethnic names that used to crack me up in my less-metropolitan
youth. OTOH, one of my high-school-classmates was George Hickenlooper
(All right! I confess! "Hickenlooper" *still* has me ROTFLMAO!),
father of the independent-film director, George, Jr., far-famed for
the award-winning indie film, Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade ("I
picked up a kaiser blade that was a-layin' thar by the screen door.
_Some folks call it a 'sling blade_,' I calls it a 'kaiser blade.'"),
later made into a major motion picture by Billy Bob Thornton.

For some speakers, including Robert "R." Crumb, judging by a depiction
in one of his cartoon strips, and your humble correspondent, a kaiser
blade and a sling blade are very different, the sling blade being a
heavy-duty, country-roadside, chain-gang version of a much-lighter
instrument known to some speakers as a "grass whip," used in Saint
Louis for cutting down weeds on vacant lots. The grass whip, that is,
not the sling blade.

-Wilson

On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 4:27 PM,  <RonButters at aol.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       RonButters at AOL.COM
> Subject:      Palin isn't in MS Word's dictionary (and neither was Obama)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I'm not sure how these folks' spell-checkers work, but mine is not updated=20
> daily from Microsoft Central--it is stored in my computer. So if I want to a=
> dd=20
> "Palin," I can. But I would be very unhappy if Microsoft cookied their way i=
> nto=20
> my computer to "update" my spellchecker!
>
> By the way, my MS spellchecker did not come with "Hickenlooper" in it,=20
> either, and he is mayor of a much more populous city than all of Alaska--and=
>  Bourke=20
> C. Hickenlooper was one of the two senators from Iowa throughout my boyhood.=
> =20
>
> In a message dated 10/2/08 4:03:16 PM, gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM writes:
>
>
>> -----
>> PALIN ISN'T IN THE WORD DICTIONARY
>> ...
>>=20
>> Earlier in the year we started getting messages accusing Microsoft of
>> a right-wing bias. The reason? When you typed 'Obama' into Microsoft
>> Word (and Hotmail) was marked as an incorrect spelling - worse the
>> suggested 'correct' spelling was 'Osama'. This has beenfixed though it
>> took Microsoft a surprisingly long time to sort it out.
>>=20
>> Now it's coming from the other end of the political spectrum. A few
>> Office Watchers have been writing along these lines:
>>=20
>> "Microsoft Word doesn't know how to spell 'Palin' as in the name of
>> the next Vice-President of the USA. To add insult the corrections are
>> either 'Pain' or 'Plain'. Why hasn't Microsoft fixed this? Do they
>> want to add to the slurs against this fine woman?" - Jeremy J from
>> Michigan
>>=20
>> Jeremy is right that 'Palin' isn't recognized in Word 2007 but at the
>> risk of getting into a political battle - there is no way that
>> Microsoft is engaging in any bias or attempted slur. Let's all take a
>> deep breath folks. There's neither conspiracy nor political bias here,
>> it's just Microsoft Word working as it should.
>>=20
>> If MS Word detects a word not in its dictionaries, it will flag it
>> with the now-familiar red squiggly line. If you ask for suggested
>> spellings the program will look for dictionary words that have similar
>> spellings - in the case of 'Palin' the suggestions are: Plain, Paling,
>> Pain, Palling and "Pal in" in Word 2007.
>>=20
>> ...
>>=20
>> Other US state governor names like Rell (R-Connecticut), Crist (R-
>> Florida), Minner (D-Delaware) and Beshear (D-Kentucky) don't make the
>> Word 2007 dictionary. Governor Palin wasn't omitted deliberately -
>> clearly being a US Governor isn't sufficient, of itself, to join the
>> exalted ranks of MS Word dictionary listing <g>.
>>=20
>> -----
>> From the e-mail version of Office Watch. Full version supposedly at=20
>> http://news.office-watch.com/t/?a=3D691&z=3D12
>> =A0 (Google cache at http://tinyurl.com/3fruc2)
>>=20
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>=20
>>=20
>
>
>
>
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-----
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