My unconscious rewrites history
It is not just movies (http://come-to-think.livejournal.com/5669.html) that engage my confabulation mechanism. Casual researches have revealed that I was harboring utterly false versions of recent history:
Musical chairs in San Francisco: Harvey Milk was the mayor. Dan White, the chief of police, had resigned to run against Milk. When Milk won, White asked for his job back, and Milk refused him, so White killed Milk.
Only English counts: Salman Rushdie originally wrote & published The Satanic Verses in Arabic. It was reviewed in the Arabic-language press (including that of Iran) -- mostly unfavorably, but with no threats against the author. Only when it appeared in English was there widespred indignation culminating in Khomeini's fatwa. Furious threats were made to prevent the book's appearing in paperback. I actually believed this incredible story, and remembered it as having appeared in a serious magazine article. I can find no trace of it on the Web. (Perhaps it was true of some other book?)
Musical chairs in San Francisco: Harvey Milk was the mayor. Dan White, the chief of police, had resigned to run against Milk. When Milk won, White asked for his job back, and Milk refused him, so White killed Milk.
Only English counts: Salman Rushdie originally wrote & published The Satanic Verses in Arabic. It was reviewed in the Arabic-language press (including that of Iran) -- mostly unfavorably, but with no threats against the author. Only when it appeared in English was there widespred indignation culminating in Khomeini's fatwa. Furious threats were made to prevent the book's appearing in paperback. I actually believed this incredible story, and remembered it as having appeared in a serious magazine article. I can find no trace of it on the Web. (Perhaps it was true of some other book?)