Re: words and rules

Terrence Donnelly scripsit:

> A woman entered a cab at Boston's Logan airport.  "Could you please
> take me someplace where I might get scrod?" she asked the cabbie.
>
> "Wow!" replied the cabbie, "I've never heard that verb in the
> pluperfect subjunctive before!"
*sigh*  That is Boston's Official Joke, solemnly trotted out on all
occasions of state.

ObBoston:  A certain Kabotchnik decided to change his name to Cabot;
the true Cabots tried to stop him; the court said that (absent fraud)
Kabotchnik was in his rights.  The resulting poem:

        Now here's to good old Boston,
        The home of the bean and the cod,
        Where the Lowells speak only to the Cabots,
        But the Cabots speak Yiddish, by God.

--
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
       I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin