[muawiyah]

The messages being left with pipebombs in mailboxes in IL/IA/NE contain this phrase: "Mailboxes are exploding! Why, you ask?"

I think that has a South Slav "lilt" to it. Dan Ackroyd and Steve Martin used to do this one quite well - however, they called their characters "Two Czech Brothers". It didn't sound quite Czech, but more Serbo-Croatian.

[Cindy]

How interesting that you mentioned Czech. Once in awhile, I post to some of my sites wacko letters/hate mail I receive. A while back, I received a letter (via post) from this guy who signed his post as "Universe People" and appeared to be connected with the Czech people. His letter was nuttier than a bad fruitcake.

One of the observations I made then, was this guy might be really hateful or just had a bad translator. I'm not saying that the mail box bomber is related to the "Universe People" poster, but I am saying that there is a similar type style of translating words and phrases into stilted English.

Anyway you can read it in my Editor's notebook. Just click on the link to a post from "Universe People."

Editor's Notebook