I'm sure you've all noticed how often glurges and "this is funny" emails are really somebody's copyrighted material, stripped of its publication material and labeled "author unknown" and either passed on verbatim or substantially altered. (See the Do Not Steal This Article thread for an example)

Kathy B. has a simply miraculous knack (what search engine are you using for that, Kathy?) for finding original sources for the glurges we see here. I occasionally take the information she gives us and email one of the glurgy sites to ask that they give the correct attribution, but that's futile.

I first noticed this phenomenon oh, 8 years ago. 9 years ago, I visited my brother-in-law, who had a subscription to the Journal of Irreproducible Results (now mutated into The Annals of Improbable Research. He gave me a xeroxed page to take home with a copy of a story that had convulsed me with laughter, a report by a Los Alamos scientist of the new element, Administratium. Within the year,people started sending me this thing in emails. The author had effectively lost credit for it that fast. If I can turn up the original article, I'll share his name and publication data with you folks.

What's particularly ironic to me is that the people who are most likely to send out glurges and other materials with attributions stripped are also the most likely to be heard complaining about the lack of values in our culture culture. Apparently respect for copyright isn't a moral value.

I've recently decided that my only response to glurges is to write back (copied to the entire "cc" list) pointing out that the identity of the "unknown author". Since making this policy decision last weekend I've sent back three attributions and received no response at all. It remains to be seen whether it'll stem the flow of new glurge. Probably not.

Author unknown (C)

Originally posted by Kiwibird:

You know, for me, this just opens up a whole new world of possibilities.

Glurgeo, I glurge.

Glurgere, to glurge.

Glurgui, I have glurged.

Glurgitum, it has been glurged.

Glurgere humanum est, delere divinum est.

To glurge is human, to delete them is divine.

Vivamus atque glurgeamus.

Let us live, and let us glurge.

Glurgeo et amo. Quare id faciam fortasse requiris. Nescio. Fortasse nimium otii habeo.

I glurge and I love. Perhaps you ask why I do this. I do not know. Perhaps I have too much free time.

Arma virumque glurgeo.

I glurge of arms and the man.

Si hoc glurgeum legere scis, operis boni in rebus Latinis alacribus et fructuosis potiri potes!

If you can read this glurge, you can get a good job in the fast-paced, high-paying world of Latin!

Mitte hoc glurgeum omnibus amicis!

Send this glurge to all of your friends!

Oh, I could just go on and on. . .

[Edited by Autolycus to change some wording around. Catullus would be so ashamed..]

Auto! How could you forget:

Quos deus vult perdere prius glurgere.

hmmmm and feel free to correct the grammar.

Ave, Autolycus, imperatur futurus, or at least you deserve to be.

How about

Aut inveniam glurgeum aut faciam

(I will either find a glurge or make one up.)

And of course we mustn't forget:

De glurgibus non disputandum.

(There's no accounting for glurge.)

Cave glurgem.

(Beware of the glurge.)

Qui glurgiet ipso glurges?

(Who shall glurge the glurgers themselves?)

How about:

Illegitemi non glurgeum(?)...

"Don't let the bastards glurge you!"

Eh.. at work we have a sentence that's much easier to pronounce -- "Commiting Flander" (or "Flandering"). Based on The Simpsons character Ned Flanders

[elitist snobbery*]Oh, but this game loses its charm if anyone can do it.[/elitist snobbery]. Half the fun of replying to a glurge with "Cogito ergo non glurgeo" or "Glurgere humanum est, delere divinum est" is either adding the translations in parentheses or having the glurger come begging for a translation.

*I was an elitist snob before anyone had ever thought of a "Blue Marline".

Ooooh... true... true... maybe we'll call it "C-ing F." That'd definitely get people riled up.

LOL...my own E-mail signature file includes a line in a language even more obscure than Latin (Primitive Norse). I added it after someone saw the username "runelady" on my old E-mail account and assumed I was a sci-fi/fantasy fan--not a scholar of the real historical runes. And yes, it's elicited a few "WTF?" replies...along with in-jokes by others in my field. Latin isn't the only way for language geeks to have fun online, even if it is the most popular. (After all, how many people read texts in Old Norse often enough to recognize a parody?).

Ingeborg "ummm, now how do I conjugate 'glurga'?" Nordén