I’ve been a devoted listener to Prairie Homely Compendium for at least 15 years, and a devoted fan of Writer’s Almanac in broadcast — and emailed daily including Saturdays and Sundays — for at least six years. Today I noticed the little R in a circle that says in print what people don’t catch in the broadcast version of GK’s Almaknack. It’s placed at the end of the entry for the day in the same size print as the text that comes before. I believe that I can share it in quotes without being subject to charges of plagarizing, so here goes. Consider the following statement a short, quoted excerpt included in a review.
“Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.”
The little superscripted, “circle R” (if it was a brand burned into the hide of a longhorn steer) tells readers the same thing it says when encountered in an advertisement for a real estate sales agent called a Realtor (circle R). It says Not just anyone can say THAT because THAT word that begins in upper case is the mark of the “registered few” to whom permission has been given for its use.
Eons ago a flash-in-the-pan, a “Wierd Al Yankovick before Wierd Al was old enough to ride a bicycle, named Alan Sherman
(“Hello mudda, hello fadda,
Here I amat Camp Granada.
Camp is very, entertaining.
And they say we’ll have some fun when it stops raining.”)
told a Playboy interviewer he had copyrighted the note A above middle C. Sherman was a good entertainer (excellent timing; decent writer) who disappeared soon after he wrote a serious book baring his soul to the world. In the interview he said in effect, “Now that I have them laughing, I can tell them what I really think.”
THUD! <— lead balloon . . . .
but I digress. . . .
Just when I thought I finally had an irresistable title for my next book finalized, Garrison tells me he OWNS my title! That dictatorial CURR! <— written with tongue in cheek, so to speak.
Okay so I’ll find another title. In the meantime, I’m trying out my new closing. Tell me what you think.
Do the right things, and if you can’t be above average. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . be good looking.
Surely that can’t be true… can it? I’d really like to see someone challenge that legally. I mean, I wouldn’t mind putting money on the fact that someone who’s never heard of Garrison Keillor has said that at some time, and if that’s the case, theoretically, it could be argued that someone could use it for a title of a book without actually knowing that it was a registered trademark. Though, of course, they say ignorance is no defence (never stopped me trying!)
The closing is pretty much perfect. In reply to it: I try, I try… hey, look at my photo. Do I succeed, or do I succeed?
Gary — Your astute comment reminds me of a Bob Newhart comedy routine of many moon sago. He explained scientists theorized that if you assembled a large room full of monkeys typing away at Smith Coronas, eventually, they would duplicate all the great books written by human kind. Things got off to a slow start, but about the third year, one of the scientists, looking over the shoulder of a typing monkey, called to an associate, “Charlie come over here. I think we have something. It reads, ‘To be . . . or. . .not . . . to be. . . . . That . . . . is . . . . .the. . . .qtxbyrldcg.’”
Quite — but even ““Be well, do good work, and hhzugxah84” would be a reasonable legal argument, no?
GOOD one, Gary. Your banana is in the mail!
Thank you! I never say no to a hit of potassium