Discourse Analysis

The Book of Everything

Discourse Analysis
and
The Meaning of Meaning

Words have dictionary definitions that allow us to agree on what they mean. In this fashion, when I say ‘my grandmother’, you automatically know that I am referring either to the mother of my mother (maternal grandmother) or the mother of my father (paternal grandmother). This is the dictionary meaning of the word ‘grandmother’.

But words have lives of their own, and their meaning changes when used by individuals. You, the reader, never knew my grandmothers. You never will. They both passed away a long time ago. I loved them both, but for very different reasons, and to me they were as different as different can be.

This means that when you, the reader of these words, reach the word ‘grandmother’, the faces you see, the emotions you feel, the memories conjured up by that word are totally different from mine. Same word, same dictionary definition, different personal memories, experiences, relationships. In addition, the role that our grandmother(s) played in our lives will be very different too. That role may vary from culture to culture, from language to language, and from the social structure of the changing society in which we live.

For example, when I first went to Santander, Spain, I visited a family who lived in a large, detached house that contained three generations of the family – grandmother and siblings, father and mother, grandchildren, and an assortment of aunts and uncles. No need for babysitters in that household. Everybody had a vested interest in the development of the young ones and the older ones received tender, loving care, twenty-four hours a day, every day of the week.

I lived from time to time in the same town as my own grandparents. I saw them regularly, but rarely on a daily basis. When my parents sent me to my first boarding school, age six (if I remember correctly), I lost contact with my family. My paternal grandfather died when I was away at school. My maternal grandmother died while I was away at school. My paternal grandmother died when I was living in Spain. My maternal grandfather died when I was living in Canada. Alas, after those early years, I scarcely knew them. My experience, then, was so different from that of other people.

When I moved to Canada, the Atlantic Ocean separated me from my parents. My daughter, born in Canada, grew up with no close knowledge of her grandparents. The word ‘grandmother’ did not mean the same to her as it did to the grandchildren in Santander, or to me. How could it? All those miles between the families, and visits limited to a couple of weeks every other year at best. Although the dictionary meaning is always the same, what a difference in the emotional meanings for each person using that word.

Discourse Analysis, the way I use it, builds not on the dictionary meanings of words, but on their emotional and personal resonance. I take the standard, dictionary meaning of words, twist it, look for meanings at different levels, and then build an alternative narrative on that changed meaning. I have great fun doing so.

Part of that verbal fun comes from my childhood. I listened to Radio Shows like The Goon Show and Beyond Our Ken. Giles’ Cartoons gave my names like Chalky White, the skeletal school teacher, or Mr. Dimwitty, a rather dense teacher in another school. These shows also twisted the meaning of words and drew their humor from such multiple meanings. The Goon Show – “Min, did you put the cat out?” “No, Henry, was it on fire?” Or on an escaped convict – “He fell into a wheelbarrow of cement and showed every sign of becoming a hardened criminal.” Or from Beyond Our Ken – “My ear was ringing. I picked it up and answered it. ‘Ken here, who am I speaking to?’ ‘Larry Choo.’ ‘Ah, Choo.’ ‘Bless you, Ken.’ Verbal scenes like these – it’s hard to get visual pictures from listening to the radio – remain engraved in my memory banks. More than engrained, they become part of the verbal system from within which I write.

This system includes Direct Discourse, Indirect Discourse, and the Twisted Discourse of an Inventive Mind that still wishes to create. It also comes from Francico de Quevedo’s Conceptismo, from Ramón del Valle-Inclán’s esperpento, and from certain aspects of Albert Camus’s Theory of the Absurd, all blended with the poetry of Jacques Prévert and the songs of Georges Brassens. This from the latter – “Tout le monde viendra me voir pendu, sauf les aveugles, bien entendu.” Everyone will come to see me hanged, except the blind of course.

This is not always easy humor, nor is it a comfortable way to see the world. But it is a traditional one with a long literary history. The title of my book goes back to Francisco de Quevedo, of course, who, in 1631, in Madrid, published El libro de todas las cosas y otras muchas más / The book of everything and a lot more things as well. Don Roger turns to his good friend Don Francisco whenever he needs a helping hand.

The pieces themselves were first published on my blog rogermoorepoet.com. They have been revised, and I have added some more pieces in a similar vein. Tolle, lege – Take and read.  Above all, enjoy this world of mine, with its subtle and not so subtle humor, its sly digs at many of our follies, and its many forms of creativity.

The Book of Everything
and
a little bit extra
Click on the title to purchase this book.

What’s your favorite recipe?

What’s my favorite recipe?

I find it hard to talk about my favorite recipe at a time when so many people in this world of ours are desperately short of food. I get regular messages from the local food bank – can I help them out? And I try to do my best. Alas, my pittance is a drop in the ocean of want and need.
Our local supermarkets have food baskets that you can add to your food bill. These will then be handed over to those who distribute food to the needy. Then there are the checkouts where I am regularly asked if I will add $2 to my bill for the food bank. I usually give $5 or $10.
I see old men sitting at the entrances to stores, a coffee cup before them with some petty cash in it. I also see homeless, workless people at traffic lights with signs held up, asking for cash.
I don’t want to start on war zones, on the accidental-on-purpose starvation of people, on the targeted destruction of homes, animals, and crops. Nor do I want to contemplate the rising prices of what used to be staple groceries and are now becoming luxury items – olive oil, meat, coffee.
While I can still afford some, but not all, luxuries, far too many people can’t. And yet you ask me what is my favorite recipe? Well, here goes –

Take one pound of charity, stir in a pound of love, add a spoon full of humanity, mix with half a pint of the milk of human kindness, sprinkle the mix with a half cup of sugar – to take away some of life’s bitterness, pepper it with ground Good Samaritanism – to add some neighborly love, and complete it with essence of humanity – to remind us that we are still human. Then distribute it, free of charge, everywhere you possibly can but, above all, not just to the needy, but to those who are capable of changing the situation, but for some reason or other, refuse to do so.
Pax amorque.

What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?

Daily writing prompt
What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?
View all responses

What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?

A simplistic question in so many ways as so many definitions are needed. How long is long? 100 years? 200 years? Back to 1066 to watch the Battle of Hastings? 1588 to see the Spanish Armada sailing up the channel? 1815 to see the Battle of Waterloo and talk with Wellington and Napoleon – why not? I am Anglo-Welsh and New Brunswick is bilingual, French and English, so why shouldn’t I – or anyone else who wants to live such a long life – have a talk with both of them?

And does living a very long life include the concept of being healthy, and happy, and wise, and not living in squalor or poverty or in a permanent war zone? How about being kept in an incubator, or an iron lung, or on permanent life support? How long is long under those (or similar) conditions. And what about friends and family? In the Celtic myths, men who visit the fairies in Ireland and live and eat with them, come back to reality [now define that word in this day and age] only to find their friends and families long dead and gone. So what would the conditions of the ‘return’ be like if a long life meant watching the passing of everyone and everything you know or returning to a world you no longer recognized?

And change is so rapid nowadays. AI is developing so quickly, how can anyone keep up? I know that as I slow down (mentally and physically) I understand less and less about the machines I use, including my Nexus Rollator. Does a ‘very long life’ include sipping from the Fountain of Youth? Or does it consist of an enlarged old age – post molestam senectutem, nos habebit humus – after a troubled old age, the earth will have us. I am sure we all recognize Gaudeamus igitur, in Latin, and its theme of Ubi sunt qui ante nos in mundo fuere – where now are those lived in this world before us, and if we don’t, then how swiftly we have forgotten the power of Latin is with its memorable phrases and omnipresent seeds of memento mori .

For me the question is a clear one – do you wish for quantity (a very long life) or quality (a very happy and successful one, even if it is a bit shorter)?

A close friend of mine, one of the most honest and courageous people that I have known, suffering in a horrific way from terminal cancer, asked for, and received, MAID (Medical Assistance In Dying). It was a long legal and medical process to get MAID, involving famiy members, lawyers, doctors, and many other things. As the Romans used to say mors omnia solvit – death resolves everything. My friend and his family preferred to shorten life – on their own terms – rather than prolong it under such prolonged suffering and torment. My friend, I salute you and your family and commend you for your bravery.

So, define the terms within which that very long life would be lived – and then ask yourself the question once more. Because as it stands right now, with no further understanding, the answer should only be “depends”. And remember, lives are like swimming pools – they have shallow ends and deep ends. All too often when you talk about life and the end of life, so much depends.

Comment:

I must thank my friend, Moo, for his depiction of the fireworks from New Year’s Eve. Sky Flowers, he calls it. The fireworks have gone already – but – vis breve, ars longa – his painting still survives.

Nightmares

Nightmares

The jaws that bite,
the claws that snatch,
the hands grasping you
through the railings
as you scuttle upstairs.

Those same hands descending,
beating, shaking you,
back and forth, a rag doll,
then thrusting you into
that cold, dark cupboard
beneath the stairs, no story,
your childhood reality.

And now, those dreams come back
and you lie awake watching
as the grey revenants return
and the nightmares repeat
themselves, again and again.

And return they will, until
that final curtain call,
when the stage turns black,
and you’ll never be taunted,
haunted, and hunted ever again.

Comment:
On Thursday night we discussed the difference between poetry of play and poetry that expresses the authenticity of being. Into which category does this poem fall. Intertextuality – the idea of texts talking to texts. How many different texts can you count, talking to each other in this poem that may even be a Jackpine Sonnet?





When are you most happy?

Daily writing prompt
When are you most happy?
View all responses

When are you most happy?

What on earth does that mean? When? Are we talking time of day, or time of night? Are we talking a season of the year? Are we talking mood swings – happy now, oh dear, mood swing, not happy now? Are we talking Hen Wen, the magic white pig at the feeding trough? “I am at my happiest, oink-oink, when I am eating a big burger from …” – and here you name your favorite burger outlet. None of that Hen Wen nonsense applies, of course, if you are vegetarian, vegan, or have an allergy to burgers or buns!

I can tell you when I am least happy – 7:30 am, on a wet, damp, cold, icy, snowy winter morning, when I have to get up, get dressed, and go out in the mush and the slush to have an early morning blood test – no food or drink for 12 hours – at the local hospital. Last time I did that, I couldn’t find a parking spot, and drove round and around until eventually one opened up, as far away as possible from the hospital of course. No, I was not a happy camper on that occasion. Especially when I slipped on the ice, returning to my car, and then found someone had driven into my side while I was parked there. Oh, that made me so happy and so jolly, I laughed until I cried. [I do hope you can recognize sarcasm when you see it.]

So, let us reverse the question and reframe it by saying that I am perfectly happy when the things that make me miserable do not happen. No fender-bender in the ice and snow – I am a happy man. Caught speeding or jumping a red light – totally by accident, of course, – and the man in blue asks me for my license, sees that it’s my birthday, and lets me drive away with a verbal warning and a jovial ‘happy birthday”! Ah yes, reverse psychology, that sort of thing does make me happy.

So, above all, it’s the little things in life that go right, and not wrong, that make me happy. This morning’s boiled egg, boiled to perfection – not too hard, not too soft. My coffee a perfect blend designed to bring joy and happiness. Marmalade on blue cheese, the Welsh equivalent of Chinese sweet and sour – oh yes, and actually making someone laugh or smile when they read this nonsense I write. Even Hen Wen grunts with joy – oink! oink! – at that one. So if you have enjoyed this post, please take the time to send me an oink or two, and I will be happy. Thanking you in advance is, yours sincerely, Hen ‘oink!’ Wen ‘oink!’ Wink, ‘oink!’

What is your favorite form of physical exercise?

Daily writing prompt
What is your favorite form of physical exercise?
View all responses

What is your favorite form of physical exercise?

As the arthritis gets worse and the pain grips more and more, I am not sure that I have any favorite form of physical exercise. Perhaps getting in and out of the whirlpool bath? Getting out after a half hour or so soaking, is easy enough. But getting in, after a couple of days without one – well, that can be a bit of a pain.

Then there’s getting up in the morning. That is exercise in itself. Hauling myself out of bed. Limping to the bathroom. Doing some s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g when I remember too. Painful to do, but I usually feel usually a bit better afterwards. Don’t forget the obstacle race of making it, half-asleep, to the bathroom during the night. Then there’s getting dressed in the morning and that’s always an interesting exercise. Sometimes I need help with socks, or shirt, especially after a bath. Shoes are always a wrestling match, as are shorts and jeans. What used to take me about 90 seconds, now takes closer to ten or fifteen minutes. Hardly aerobic!

And speaking of aerobics, physical exercise can also refer to anaerobic and an / aerobic with lactic acid build up. Lactic acid and the ensuing cramps have never been anyone’s favorite form of physical exercise, unless they are masochists instructed by a sadistic coach, as sometimes happens.

The stairs are always a great physical exercise. Easiest is walking safely downstairs in the morning. But there is always the fear of a fall, especially with the turn round the Newell post at the bottom. And then there’s climbing up again safely at night. That takes longer and longer, one painful foot lift at a time.

Cooking has become a physical exercise too. Peeling the vegetables and cutting them up can be quite vigorous. Standing at the stove cooking, gently stirring the food, that is good exercise, as is setting the table and serving the food.

But perhaps my favorite exercise is what the Abulenses call El paseo de la nevera. This is to get up, to walk to the fridge, and to grab another can of beer or open a new bottle of wine. Maybe that is my favorite form of physical exercise, that and the repeated elbow lift and flex that is necessary to drain the can or the bottle or the glass. And don’t forget, there’s always the pinch of salt and the over-the-shoulder salt throw, always necessary with this style of blogging, where everything you read should be taken with a large pinch of salt.

Do lazy days make you feel rested or unproductive?

Daily writing prompt
Do lazy days make you feel rested or unproductive?
View all responses

Do lazy days make you feel rested or unproductive?

How on earth do you define a lazy day? If a Lazy Boy is a chair, what is a Lazy Day? Is it something like a Lazy Rocker? Or a Lazy Twister? ‘Come on, let’s twist again’! Is it no more than a lazy, hazy, crazy day of summer, as the song would have it? In which case, is it possible to have a lazy day when summer has gone, the days grow cold, and autumn is on the way? And who is having the lazy day, anyway? And is that a lazy painting I see before my eyes?

Enjoying retirement, as I am, busy or not, I feel quite rested, most of the time. As for being productive or unproductive, well! I feel productive when I post an answer to a blog prompt. So today, I am being productive. Ipso facto, I suppose I am not being lazy, though the sun is shining outside, the leaves are actually staying on the trees, after the overnight frost, and are not hurrying and scurrying and busying themselves in falling to to the ground. It’s a lazy leaf day – they are definitely not being productive. If they were, they would be littering the yard for me to tidy them up and then they would be productive by making me labour, and I would not be having a lazy day, because I would be busy picking up the leaves, putting them into piles, then waiting for the busybody wind to stop being lazy and to interfere with my work and scatter leaves around the garden again.

So, back to the original prompt – Do lazy days make you feel rested or unproductive? Let us give a totally non-committal, political answer – after all, it is the election season – and say – “It depends”. It depends on the multiple meanings of a lazy day, rested, productive, or unproductive. If the hen doesn’t lay an egg, is she being lazy and unproductive? Or does she feel fulfilled and rested? I could ask any one of the dozen or so eggs I keep resting in the fridge. Oh boy, do they have a restful time, lying there, eggs-in-waiting. And what are they waiting for? That joyous moment when they appear in public, are cracked open and whisked into omelets or scrambled like the brain – rested, rusted, busy, productive or unproductive – of anyone so twisted that they would write anything like this in response to a simple prompt. A simple prompt, you say? Now that’s a great departure point – what do you mean by a simple prompt? Answers on an egg-shell fragment please!

Ah yes, it’s another busy, productive day and my scrambled brains, like the scrambled eggs I devoured for breakfast, are all as busy as little bees can be, even though the bees are now out of season and there are none left in the garden. And with that I bid you farewell, au revoir, or is it adieu? I’m too lazy to care? Please choose whichever buzz word suits you best!

What things give you energy?

Daily writing prompt
What things give you energy?
View all responses

What things give you energy?

What on earth do you mean by energy? And why should energy be associated with things? For example, today’s painting (above) is by my friend Moo. He calls it Joy to the World. It is indeed a joyous painting, full of light and creative energy. The photo does not do justice to the painting, which sparkles and reaches out to draw the viewer in. We must never underestimate the energy that comes from the creativity and art that creative people put into their art works. It is like bread cast upon the waters – it will return tenfold. The world would be a sad place if we lost our powers of creativity and invention. May we always keep them close by us, and turn to them when the skies are grey – for with our ingenuity and skills we can always turn those grey skies blue again. It just takes time, trust, belief, creativity, and a little bit of energy.

Or is the prompt referring to the energy that comes from food? Vonnegut refers to such energy as comes from the breakfast of champions. Was that really Scott’s Porridge Oats? Certainly used to be – and all those caterwauling bagpipes puffing out their oaten tunes. More foods, please. Cornish Hens and Kedgeree, unzipped bananas, eggs – preferably fresh and free range – boiled, poached, scrambled, fried, or served in various types of omelets … energy from food – oh, I could go on and on and on … caws wedi pobi, cennin a tatwys … tortilla espanola, paella de mariscos, calamares en su tinta … chapulines from Oaxaca … food as a source of energy … wow! And who said the foods had to be written in English?

Mind you, an alternate source of energy is the current news cycle. When not a storm in a tea-cup, sugared or un-sugared, it is ferocious and opinionated enough to set people banging their heads against the walls so the pain will come from an alternate source. And noise demands energy – energy in (and also garbage) and energy out (mainly garbage), and all that rage, fury, wind, despair, blather, generated by written, printed, spoken, televised, radio borne waves of noise. We could start a wind farm if we trapped the blatherings of congress, the senate, the houses of parliament.

Meanwhile, we live in a large house, almost a barn really. Some of our friends call it our hacienda. They are the ones who speak no Spanish and can’t pronounce Quevedo correctly, even though I’ve known them for a quarter of a century. Actually, strictly speaking, most of them are ex-friends now. Many went AWOL when I retired and the rest disappeared, fates unknown, during Covid.

That house has an electric furnace that warms us in winter and circulates cool air, in summer, from the basement (cool) to the upstairs bedrooms (warm). We also have a fireplace insert that burns wood. But we only use that in emergencies (power loss during cold weather or storms) or for decoration (the yule log) at Christmas and over the New Year.

A large house means large heating bills. About ten years ago, we installed a wonderful heat pump that serves the whole house. It heats in winter and cools in summer. It also halves (or more) our electricity bills. Most of the house functions on electricity, hydro-electricity from the dam at Mactaquac, just up the road. No coal-fired furnaces for our electric supply. We do, however, have the ability to connect to a petrol-driven generator. But we rarely, if ever use it and that, too, is for emergency use only.

Otherwise, many of the things we use on a daily basis – computers, cell phones – can be battery driven (when the power fails) and those batteries can be charged in the car (during emergencies) or from reserved chargers hidden away. The car itself is a normal gas engine – nothing special – as is the snow blower. We do not use solar power – nor wind power – but we do have candle power and our fireplace insert can be used for heating food and boiling water.

So there, as a challenge to your lack of clarity, you have a clear account of my many sources of different types of energy. Oh, and don’t forget, I am energized by earing your prompts apart and chomping them into tiny pieces.

Comment – revised, Sunday, 22 September 2024.

How would you design the city of the future?

Daily writing prompt
How would you design the city of the future?
View all responses

How would you design the city of the future?

What future? Utopian or Dystopian?

Dystopian – how does one plan to design the city of the future in, for example, Syria, Gaza, Ukraine, a war-torn African country? There are wars and rumors of wars. What sort of future city does one design in the aftermath of a nuclear war? Bunkers for the elite? Underground tunnels? Radiation free zones? MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction – and who would be alive to inhabit one of those cities? The ultra-rich might escape on their super-yacht-space-crafts. But where would they go? And for how long would they survive? And what sort of cities would they build when they got to wherever they were going? From some of the rumors that I am hearing, the multi-billionaires are already building those -super-survival-Noah’s-Ark-Bunker Cities in various parts of our world as it is now. A water world? A dust storm world? A radio-active world? First, define the future, and then we can design for it.

And remember how many times, during and after the first Iraq war, we have heard generals and politicians boasting that ‘we bombed them back to the stone age.’ Just think about that. The stone age. Primitive in the extreme. No electricity, no running water, no regular food supply, no weapons other than sticks and stones, no bronze (that age came later), no iron (that age came later), no medicine, no doctors, no hospitals … think twice before you celebrate ‘bombing anyone back to the stone age’, because that might just happen to you, over the next few years. And remember, if everybody turns off all sources of light, we will be entering a very dark age indeed.

Utopian – Voltaire’s Candide – “everything is for the best in the best of all worlds.” Great. Now re-read the paragraph above. Even if our desired Utopian world avoids a nuclear holocaust and turns out to be the best of all worlds, we are still looking at climate change, rising seas – with the accompanying joy of developing new waterfront properties!??? as someone phrased it recently – over-population, mass population shifts, a dwindling set of natural resources, a scarcity of food and, more important, a scarcity of drinking water, and a tremendous division between the ultra-rich and the super poor. We are also dealing with forever plastics, polluted water, air pollution, the extinction of vital and diverse species, and so many more problems. A Utopia, perhaps, but a Dystopian Utopia, not a total disaster, but a Utopian world walking the plank towards a shark-infested sea.

So, tell me, how do we design the city of the future? A super-charged Noah’s Ark, space ship city, sailing to Planet B because we have flooded Planet A with so many devastating Dystopian indulgences? A deep-earth bunker, or linked set of bunkers, way below the earth, where a select community think they can ride out the coming storm? And what if our planet disintegrates and becomes just another dust cloud, its debris floating in the universe?

I would like to think that my own city of the future would be a small one-roomed, wooden cottage, buried six feet deep, in the peace and quiet of a rural cemetery. But who will bury me, if the world around me perishes and I survive only to fulfill my human fate, and die? I would also welcome a fiery end with my ashes scattered in the peace of the countryside, or in my own garden. Then I think of the wildfires currently consuming large parts of the world and I wonder if any of that will survive. Moreover, can a welcome grave in an enormous graveyard be considered a city of the future? If it can, get planning.

Mors omnia solvit / death solves everything. Indeed it does. And it will solve this question, this problem, and the future city, that I will never design or inhabit, unless, along with Blake, “we build Jerusalem, in England’s green and pleasant land.” If England’s Green and Pleasant Land still exists. And from what I am reading in the dystopian English press, there is little chance of that! And anyway, I live in Canada, so what has England’s polluted and dystopian land got to do with me?

Where did your name come from?

Daily writing prompt
Where did your name come from?
View all responses

Where did your name come from?
That seems to be a strange sort of question. First of all, what do you mean by ‘your name’? My surname (or family name), my Christian name, my second name, my nick-name? I have already answered that particular question – to find out, click on this link – What’s the story behind your nickname?

As for my surname, well, that came from my father, and his came from his father, and his came from his father – and so on, ad infinitum. If we go back to the original chicken and egg theory, then we find out that, according to Wikipedia, Moore (pronounced mʊər or mɔːr/ is a common English-language surname. It was the 19th most common surname in Ireland in 1901 with 15,417 members. It is the 34th most common surname in Australia, 32nd most common in England, and was the 16th most common surname in the United States in 2000. It can have several meanings and derivations, as it appeared as a surname long before written language had developed in most of the population, resulting in a variety of spellings. Variations of the name can appear as Moore, More or Moor; as well as the Scottish Gaelic originations Muir, Mure and Mor/Mór; the Manx Gaelic origination Moar; the Irish originations O’More and Ó Mórdha; and the later Irish variants O’Moore and de Mora. The name also arises as an anglicisation of the Welsh epithet Mawr meaning great or large.

So, where did my surname, Moore, come from? Well, you tell me. Because Wikipedia didn’t exactly give me a perfect location for its origin.

As for Roger – well, here we go again. Wikipedia says the following – Roger is a masculine given name, and a surname. The given name is derived from the Old French personal names Roger and Rogier. These names are of Germanic origin, derived from the elements hrōd, χrōþi (“fame”, “renown”, “honour”) and gār, gēr (“spear”, “lance”) (Hrōþigēraz). The name was introduced into England by the Normans. In Normandy, the Frankish name had been reinforced by the Old Norse cognate Hróðgeirr. The name introduced into England replaced the Old English cognate Hroðgar. Roger became a very common given name during the Middle Ages. A variant form of the given name Roger that is closer to the name’s origin is Rodger. So there you are. Or you could blame my father and mother, or the gentleman who dipped me in the baptismal font and baptized me with that name. Personally, I cannot remember a thing about it.

Of course – wrth gwrs – me being a creative writer with a sense of humor and a parentage that was also creative, my name might have been drawn out of a hat, or found in a Christmas Cracker, or suggested by the slip of paper inside a Fortune Cookie, or discovered in a bottle left by that ubiquitous Welsh or Irish or French or Scottish or English milkman, Moore the Milk. I only know that I am one of the few people I have ever met blessed with that name. Alas, I never met my namesake – Roger Moore aka James Bond aka .007 [respect that dot, it comes from Rudyard Kipling!] – although I have been gifted with those names and that number by several of my acquaintances.