That explains something. I found these in a dumpster out back, and was thinking they probably belonged to someone:

AEOOOUUOEAE

They're a little dirty, and somewhat shaken up, but it looks like they're all there, and they might still be usable. (I repaired an O that looked like a C. I think I did a good job, though you might be able to tell which one if you are looking for it.)

Speaking of suspicious characters, I found my old (ca 1979) Letraset and Formatt catalogs, containing the wonderfully ostentatious Calypso font, which I scanned for the day I can think of a use for it. If anyone knows where I might find this as a computer font, I'd like to know about it. I search for it from time to time. There's something that calls itself Calypso, but it's not the gloriously goofy display caps that look like curved sheets of plastic, rendered in Zip-a-tone (or Letratone or Geoex or whatever) screens.

Posted August 29, 2003 9:09 AM by Kip W

Kip, that font must not fall into Tim Kyger's hands.

Posted August 29, 2003 9:25 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

TNH: Kip, that font must not fall into Tim Kyger's hands.

I must not know my own strength. In a scuffle with one of Tim's minions, I threw him against the wall and impaled him on the stuffed head of a rhinoceros. Turned out the blighter was wearing steel plate armor on his upper body. Fancy that.

Posted August 29, 2003 11:38 AM by Alan Bostick

"Nancy Lebowitz"

nitpick: LeboVitz

Posted August 29, 2003 12:08 PM by Bill Woods

Someone help me... I get the joke, but I can't seem to fill in the blanks. What does the button actually say?

Posted August 29, 2003 12:10 PM by Holly

All your vowels are belong to us?

As in, a spoof of "all your bases are belong to us"?

That last appeared around the building of the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology. We kept wondering if it had something to do with DNA.

Posted August 29, 2003 12:41 PM by Kellie

Kellie: aagh. Dang it, I really should have thought of that variant.

I've also seen several Unixy ones along the lines of

chown -R us /home/you/*base*

which I may get on a button at some point.

Posted August 29, 2003 1:11 PM by Emmet

Would you believe I looked her name up and still typed it wrong?

Posted August 29, 2003 1:12 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

The gallant blogger includes a link to http://www.nancybuttons.com/

We'll chalk it up to more misfiring neuorns.

Posted August 29, 2003 1:36 PM by Glenn Hauman

Actually, I think that button is missing a T and an R in the last line.

So, Kip, I think the vandal must have made off with one of the A's and two of the E's. That "O that looked like a C" was probably actually a circled-C copyright dingbat.

My guess is that several of the missing letters ended up on eBay; I'm not sure if there's a comparable online auction marketplace for A's.

Posted August 29, 2003 3:09 PM by Jeremy Leader

The original is "All Your Base are Belong to Us". The "bases" version is a derivative of this, for geneticists who like video game engrish.

See the original video for a chuckle.

Posted August 29, 2003 3:15 PM by Evan Simpson

My own contribution, from the stack of found references:

http://www.io.com/persist1/logs/987932498.html

Though in the Geeky Meme-Mangling Dept. I find this far more amusing:

http://www.io.com/persist1/logs/1034364738.html

Posted August 29, 2003 5:15 PM by ben

Calypso, Calypso... would that be this typeface?

Sadly, I can't find a "real" version, but that looks like a decent enough knockoff.

Posted August 29, 2003 5:39 PM by Bryant

Teresa, you and Alan are both too late. I cornered the market on that particular old Letraset font years ago... Bwha ha ha ha!

Posted August 29, 2003 6:20 PM by Tim Kyger

Ooh. I must have one of these buttons.

Posted August 29, 2003 6:36 PM by chris.

Bryant, that's it. Previous searches failed to turn it up, but you found it for me. Hearty thanks to you, my good soul!

Well, let's look at the checklist: Found sheet music for "Chlo-e," obtained "Songs for Swinging Housemothers," got a fresh copy of the "Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street" LP, found "Calypso" font... wow! Just a few more items, and it's the Apocalypse.

(Can't spell apocalypse without calypso ape.)

Posted August 30, 2003 8:10 AM by Kip W

Teresa, why do you even have to question? It's not like any of us are going to believe you didn't look it up. ;)

Posted August 30, 2003 1:29 PM by Stephanie Zvan

Kip -- well, of course; -all- tales of the imminent destruction of All that Is (and possibly immanentizing the eschaton, but that's another story, and have you ever tried to get "immanent" past your average street-level proofreader?) are scavenger hunts on the Carole Lombard-movie screwball scale, with a gang of lovably zany mad cultists trying to collect all the missing bits, which have been carefully hidden by the Templars, the Watchers, and postal workers everywhere. Only when these items are brought together (the Candlestick in the Library, the Misplaced Book of Whitmore, the Spear of the Legionary Who Didn't Get any Stage Business at the Crucifixion, the NBC Censer) can things come to pass, though since the forces of Not Destroying Everything are usually a little slow on the pursuit ("'Ye trayne hight D up towne mote be.' I must ponder what this means. Make some coffee.") the cult also has to don their Isaac Mizrahi robes and chant for a couple of days.

Google is merely the thumb-index of the Necronomicon.

Posted August 30, 2003 4:37 PM by John M. Ford

I should add that today, out of the blue, my sister e-mailed me a scan of a piece of music that's been going through my head (fragmentarily) for thirty to forty years. I printed it out and have been playing it.

And now rain is pelting loudly on the roof, with almost continual lightning and rolling thunder. Maybe I should try and finish Al's book tonight, instead of waiting for morning.

Posted August 30, 2003 10:11 PM by Kip W

John M. Ford: It's okay for the forces of Not Destroying Everything to lag behind, because of course, once the cult puts the McGuffin of Ultimate Doom together and finishes chanting, the timestream will be disrupted, and Our Plucky Hero can leap into the rift in history, travel back in time for anywhere between forty-five seconds and ten minutes, and prevent the McGuffin's assembly (and, incidentally, also prevent the murder of OPH's love interest, the despair over which was what prompted OPH to leap into the rift in the first place).

Posted August 31, 2003 12:30 PM by Alan Bostick

John M. Ford wrote: Google is merely the thumb-index of the Necronomicon.

Now THERE is a sig line for a reference librarian...

Posted September 2, 2003 12:09 PM by Janet Croft

Just to be on the safe side, I'm cutting and pasting Nielsen Hayden, an even more difficult name. Merely looking a name up when your mind is solidly convinced that the normal form is something other than the way its actually spelled isn't enough. I've had my name gotten wrong immediately after having said it twice, spelled it, and shown it in print.

It's enough to make me suspect that people (definitely including me) miss a great deal of what's going on around them.

Meanwhile, I continue in my campaign to publicize my name enough that Leibowitz will be mispronounced.

A while ago, there was the possibility of an award for religious sf (I think the idea was floated at the first Trinocon, but I haven't heard anything about it since), to be called the Leibowitz award. I would probably have volunteered to be on the jury anyway (the project sounded interesting), but the name collision made it even more appealing.

Posted September 4, 2003 10:19 AM by Nancy Lebovitz

For what it's worth, I'm back on my own computer and keyboard and operating system. It helps a lot.

LEBOVITZ.

I'll try to remember it.

Posted September 4, 2003 4:18 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

I tend to make this mistake, too. It does explain to me why I couldn't find the web site I knew existed. :)

But I know what my problem is. I hear Lebovitz, my mind automatically spells it with a w, for almost the same reason I assume -ski on the end of a name instead of -sky (that'd be 'long years of being Polish'). I type what I 'hear', so I could be LOOKING RIGHT AT THE NAME and there'd be a good chance I'd get it wrong.

I make homophonic typos all the time. Except, oddly, the expected ones.

Posted September 4, 2003 7:00 PM by Tina