Date:         Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:44:51 -0600
Reply-To:     joel walker <uncajoel@BELLSOUTH.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         joel walker <uncajoel@BELLSOUTH.NET>
Subject:      Re: To G or not to G ... that is the question.
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... whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
the stings and barriers of outrageous language
or to make email against a sea of rabble
and by opposing, end them.


mayhaps there are those among you who do not know of what this thread
speaks.
that is, does everybody know what G and PG and the rest actually mean?

thought not.

so here goes ...

Current (since 1990), ratings for internet email lists are as follows:

G - Goofy.
pure silliness, compounded by frequent misspellings and generally very
bad grammar, often accompanied by bad syntax as well.  analagous to
Monty Python humor at its worst and most ridiculous. swear words must
be of an absolutely silly nature and are usually misspelled using the
uppercase symbols of the number row at the top of the keyboard.

PG - Partly Goofy.
semi-pure silliness. somewhat more elevated in intellect than G-rated
lists, but still silly now and then. frequency of silliness is roughly
half that of G-rated lists.
swear words are spelled out but usually phonetically rather than
correctly.

PG-13 - Partly Goofy 13 percent.
Partly Goofy but only 13 percent as silly as PG-rated lists. the 13%
is just sort of a goal, actually, not a requirement or standard.
usually falls far short of that goal, by the way.
short, one-syllable swear words are often spelled correctly.

R - Racy.
lots of swear words. subject matters of purely salacious natures,
including but not limited to sex, politics, money, sex, religion, auto
mechanics, sex, railroads, steamboats, aircraft (including dirrigibles
and helicopters), and sex.

NC-17 -  No One Cares - 17%.
at least 17% of the words used must be filthy, disgusting, and foul in
nature, or you get kicked off the list. sometimes referred to as the
Star Trek rating ...
but only by Trekkies who cannot spell the correct hull number of the
USS Enterprise, NCC-1701.  because of this confusion, emails are
sometimes cluttered with swearing in non-existant languages such as
Klington or Vulcan.

M - Maudlin.
usually found referring to email lists of a self-help nature regarding
subjects that were best just left alone ... like discussing daytime
soap opera or talk shows on television. not much swearing here ...
just a lot of dull, depressing sobbing and moaning. Opra and Dr. Phil
are worshipped as gods on these lists.

X - Xenographic.
mailing lists proporting to solve social problems between radically
distinct groups or cultures or hobbies. lots of swearing and threats
of deadly nature. very low informational content.
these lists rarely last more than a year.


you may sometimes hear of lists referred to by their color codes ...
once used to denote movie trailers, advertising, posters and other
media for promoting films.

Green -
lots of money changing hands, plenty of list vendors and people buying
stuff from them. "paypal" is the most commonly used phrase found in
the emails. the pre-incarnation of ebay.com.

Yellow -
lots of pissing and moaning going on here. old british sport car lists
are usually 'yellow'.

Red -
bleeding hearts usually found on these lists, crying and sobbing about
the state of the world and how we're all gonna die next week cause we
didn't take care of the Dodo birds and the Carolina parakeets, and the
Mayans were right all along.

so there you have it. now you can speak out with Authority and
Accuracy. :)

unca joel