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I suppose Bill Blackbeard is the proper person to ask about this, but does anybody know if the fragment of a sea chanty printed below is genuine? I suspect that it was just dashed off for the comic book I'm quoting it from, but I'd be interested in knowing for sure:
"Oh, haul up the anchor an' cast off the lines!
My ship is a-sailin' out to sea!
An' soon we'll be boundin' over waves hard a-poundin'...
Yo-ho! That's the life for me!
On a cold, clear night when the moon is out of sight,
An the wind goes a-whistlin' through the spars;
There ain't no motion as we slip through the ocean,
An' all that we can see is stars..."
It's broken off there. It may never replace "Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!, but it's just enough better than the usual grade of comic-book literature that it's got me wondering if it's a quote of something genuine. Any information would be appreciated. (Oh, the song is being sung by Black Pete, in an old MICKEY MOUSE.)
1968 doesn't seem to've started out very well for Apa L. Only the infusion of ten pages of reprints from Comics Fandom kept this from being the smallest dist'n ever. Is Apa L on its Last Legs? (It always perks up again when someone says this.)
Jim Schumacher -- Nice cover. Appropriate for the New Year.
Fred Hollander -- How'd you like Search the Sky? What do you think of it in comparison to The Space Merchants? It was what really turned me onto Pohl & Kornbluth; The Space Merchants is good, but it didn't impress me as being anything extra special. (I was probably too young when I read it to get all the satire, which is more obvious in Search the Sky.)
Ken Rudolph -- A very well drawn-up financial statement. Congratulations!
Incidentally, last week's discussions at the Meeting of The Judgment of Eve and The Butterfly Kid were the kind of talking about s-f that I've been complaining about the club lacking in recent days. And we all seemed to enjoy it, for all of its being spontaneous. I enjoyed it muchly.
Chuck Crayne -- One handy thing about the F-UNCON's being a one-shot Con, without any regular attendees to grotch about being crowded out by walk-ins, is that you can try all of the advertising ideas that people have been suggesting for years to draw the largest possible off-the-street trade; and see how they work. ## It's been so long since the MENACE has been published that I don't know how the Minutes are being kept these days. I've gotten the impression over the years, though, that different Secretaries have different ideas as what's supposed to be done with corrections to the Minutes. For instance, at Meeting B, the Minutes of Meeting A are read, and someone makes a correction. One Secretary would amend the Minutes of Meeting A to correct the error. Another Secretary would leave them untouched, with their error, but would note in the Minutes of Meeting B that a correction had been made to the Minutes of the previous Meeting. One of the troubles with Harness' Minutes was that he attempted to do the latter, but couldn't remember the corrections when he wrote up the following Meeting's Minutes, so the corrections were never made in the permanent written version. And, under the latter, there's always the danger of someone reading a set of Minutes and not knowing that it contains errors because he doesn't see the Minutes of the following Meeting with their corrections. That's why I prefer the first system, entering the corrections into the Minutes to which they refer, rather than just noting them at the Meeting at which they're made.
Bruce Pelz -- A very good start to your song parody; I'll be looking forward to seeing the further verses as they appear. Don't you (or Len) neglect "Amos Wail", though. ## Good luck on the FarleyFile, too.
Bill Glass -- I don't have any "Atomic Knights" stories before SA #138 myself, but I'm under the impression that there was only one story before #132. It sounds as though you have an almost complete set. I think Bruce has a complete set, if SA isn't one of the comics he sold when he got rid of his collection.
Don Fitch -- Gee, how many of us these days have half-hours or more to spare soaking in a tub? I take showers, myself, and I think more people do this than take baths now. This would make a nice, inane poll, come to think of it: how many LASFans take baths and how many take showers? ## I wonder if a sauna would give you a different kind of High? Or a Turkish steam bath? I suppose not. ## Another poll: who puts the most content into Apa L, and gets the least return for it, in terms of comments/response?
Sally Crayne -- Don't go!
