"Robt McElwain" <rmcelwaine@visto.com> should ahve known better than to
write...

Update from The REAL Galactic Federation and The Spiritual Hierarchy
     September 23, 2003   6 Cimi, 19 Zip, 12 Manik
Communicated thru Sheldan Nidle of The Planetary Activation Organization
     http://www.paoweb.com/updates.htm

     Selamat Jarin! We return, dear Hearts! [kookscreed snipped to

preserve sanity]

UK readers over a certain age will undoubtedly have fond memories of the
legendary children's TV series The Magic Roundabout
(http://magicroundabout.com/), written and narrated by the late and quite
wonderful Eric Thompson (father of actress Emma Thompson). One of the
characters was a pink cow called Ermintrude who would always address the
other characters as "Dear hearts!". Thompson used to narrate Ermintrude in
an amazingly camp voice, sounding like a boisterous but good-natured
middle-aged upper class English aunt. The voice was very distinctive and
just thinking about it makes me smile more than thirty years after I last
heard it.

Unfortunately for Sheldon Niddle and his followers, whenever I see one of
these "Galactic Federation Updates" starting off with "We return, dear
Hearts!...", in my head Ermintrude's voice is reading it. Actually, it makes
the whole loopy tale a lot more entertaining. I can't help but picture these
Galactic Federation aliens as a herd of pink cows, all wearing straw hats
and chewing brightly coloured flowers...

Incidentally, in the modern tradition of doing unnecessary remakes of every
popular Sixties movie or TV series, Path� are making a CGI movie of The
Magic Roundabout, due for release in 2004. Voice talent will include Kylie
Minogue (Florence), Robbie Williams (Dougal), Joanna Lumley (Ermintrude),
Jim Broadbent (Brian) and Richard O'Brien (Zebedee). Tom Baker and Ray
Winstone will play two new characters called ZeeBadee and Soldier Sam. It
should be truly bizarre.

'Boing!', Sirian for 'Time for bed.'

--
Cliff Smith

"And we'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere.
And to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together,
guys."