Back before there was a high tech, electronic, digitally driven Content Engine called pigdump.com, our daily messages were paper-based! No kidding! (This was just after the whole Gutenburg thing.) Well, we kinda miss our old selves right now in the last quarter of the last year that starts with 19__, so today at pigdump.com, we present a blast from the past... a message from an old friend, really, the Pigdump of the early 1990's:

When I was twelve years old, I decided I wanted to be a lawyer. Heck, in the ninth grade, I successfully defended Henry II, getting the old king acquitted of the murder of Thomas à Becket! A coup, needless to say. I remember listening to a favourite comedy album my parents had. One of the skits kept repeating the phrase "If you want to be a judge, you have to have the Latin." It occurred to me that Latin was going to be the tool of my trade. See, if you want to be a judge, you've got to be a lawyer and you've got to have the Latin!

Just my luck. You could start taking Latin in the tenth grade. I couldn't wait to get back to school when summer vacation was over. I picked up my timetable and searched for my Latin class. It was nowhere to be found. Now, for most people, that would have been a blessing. But not for me. I told the woman in scheduling that a mistake had been made, that I had been assured of a place in Latin 10L. "Oh no no no," said the scheduling lady (the bun on her head was more like a loaf of challah,) "there's no mistake, you've been moved into ninth grade German class." Ahem. "But I don't want German, I want Latin!" I whined. "We're sorry, dear" - I hated being called dear, especially by a woman with a bun - "but the school no longer offers Latin in the curriculum." So I never became a lawyer.

Funny things began to occur in high school. I mean beyond the hormonal thing. A new department called Business Practice opened up. We were told it was for, well, slower people: girls who would become wives/secretaries, and boys who would become junior office managers. The courses included things like Shorterhand (I guess it was more efficient than shorthand,) Business Management, and Computer Programming. My guidance councilor assured me that someone as bright as me, someone who wanted to be a professional , shouldn't really waste time with this kind of study.

Well. I wouldn't be surprised if the first thing they taught in Business Practice was: pay no attention to guidance councilors! Yep. I bet those slow students are laughing at us bright ones now! Oh yes, I admit that I was a ringleader when it came to making fun of our friends who carried around stacks of computer cards, especially when their GOTO card was mixed up with their PRESENT DATA card. It can't matter in the greater scheme of things. Computers were toys, like that ever-annoying "PONG" game that my little brother and everyone's little brother and sister went wild over. (It shouldn't matter that all those little kids have become wizards in the world of communications, respected and desired by every company in the universe.) BAH! I would never need to know about these flash-in-the-pan gizmos. So I never learned the basics of computer programming.

And here I am. At the beginning of the 1990's. Completely unequipped to survive in the circles of the intelligentsia. My university diploma doesn't have one speck of Latin on it. Heck, the university's logo is in blinking English! A symbol stamped indelibly on my life to remind me that I never took Latin and never became a lawyer. And I'm afraid I don't walk comfortably through the crowds of friends and acquaintances who interface and network in the high-tech computer world either. I'm like a middle child: feeling slightly inferior to the older sibling, and always feeling quite sure that the younger one is getting away with things that I never did -- and what's more, with better toys!!!

I've heard the famous quote that's attributed to Julius Caesar: I came, I saw, I conquered. But I'm afraid that I got trapped in a language gap somewhere between the time the Emperor cried "veni vidi vici" and the time his disciples typed "LOGON/DISPLAYSCREEN/DUMPDATA"

Gosh, weren't we cute back then?

Tomorrow: Adam West.
 

... continued 20. David Bowie's real name is David Jones.

21. The Aird Report of
1929 was the Canadian government's first formal recognition of radio broadcasting.

22. The A above middle C has a frequency of 440 hertz... ish.

23. A cocktail of gin and vermouth is called a Gibson if it has an onion in it.
to be continued...

Something new in the wind!