> (Hal Bush was born perusing the Oxford English Dictionary. . . . Terrell; For your information, I cut my teeth, like any decent Americanist should, on AMERICAN dictionaries: specifically, two of them, one by Noah Webster, the other Ambrose Bierce. And now, for the record, I would like to send my apologies for whatever heartache my little posts have caused anyone on the LIST. I admit to being a little taken aback by some of the responses I got; hopefully, however, I am not scarred for life. And, just to be perfectly clear to one and all, I think I am fairly angry about certain things, too--maybe as angry as anyone, maybe not. For example, I write these posts from southern Japan, where I have been reading whatever I want to, hiking in the mountains, watching world cup soccer, sipping tea, eating lots of fish, and generally avoiding almost everything about the entire western hemisphere. It is food for the soul to leave America occasionally and pretend to be an expatriate--at least for brief periods of time. Really one of the best things about our profession. I guess I should know better, but one American vice that keeps sneaking insistently into my Japanese sojourn is the internet and e-mail. I also should know better about the way things can come across on e-mail LISTS, most of which are far less civilized than the dear old Twain LIST, by the way. Anyway, again--my apologies for boring you with my glib political observations. Keep it real over there until my return. For now, signing off from Nippon. Sumi massen, Otsukare sama deshita (bowing), matta-ne? --Hal Bush