Coming from the wire tonight: What was that William Safire said about "that said." Also, are cartoon video games of Dragonslayer currently in production? And Sgt. Rock will show up on Cartoon Network.

This is "Fun With Referrals," with Charly Z.

Good evening. William Safire recently made a statement on what he described as a "voguism," the commonly used expression "that said." Through Ed Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan, we located the following transcript of Mr. Safire's statment:

One sense of that said is "however" and balances what goes first with what goes afterward... In its much more frequent sense of "nevertheless, in spite of that, even so" and the lusty "contrariwise," that said clears the air and clears the throat for casting aspersions on all that has preceded it. The subliminal message is "I have done my duty by touching all the bases to show my profound understanding of both sides, and the buttering-up I have just completed gives me the right to now lay upon you what I really think."

To be sure, that said has its good side.

Later reports inform us that, after making his statement, Mr. Safire was surrounded by a mob wielding heavy hardcover copies of the Oxford English Dictionary with which they beat him to a bloody pulp. After police broke the mob, one of its members stated that as a language expert the late Mr. Safire was "an expert on his ass."

On finger-twitching news, a rumor gaining currency among video game addicts states that a cartoon game based on the 80s film Dragonslayer is in production. Industry insiders deny the rumor, though, and suspect it arose from confusing the movie's title with that of the similarly sounding Dragon's Lair, an 80s arcade game which used cartoon animation instead of computer graphics. This theory is reinforced in an interview with Hal Barwood, who wrote the screenplay for Dragonslayer, conducted by Randy Slugansky:

Dragonslayer, the movie, arguably the best dragon movie ever made. Dragonslayer, the game, arguably the worst video game ever made. Why? What goes wrong between the transfer from movie to game?

Wow, I must have missed an era. To my knowledge, there was never a videogame based on our movie. If you're asking about Dragon's Lair, the old choose-the-path cartoon arcade thing with Dirk Daring, the only connection is that those guys ripped off our movie logotype. My ignorance is part of the answer to your question: Hollywood deal-makers rarely care about the licenses for what they regard as nothing more than "ancillary income." Certainly the studios were never conscious of protecting the Dragonslayer franchise, so I never got involved. It's a shame...

Industry insiders also mentioned that a new version of Dragon's Lair is currently in production, and considered the rumor was originated by "a half-brained shut-in who, obviously, needs to learn how to use a Q-Tip to remove the wax from his ears."

And on a final note, Sgt. Rock is coming to the Cartoon Network. The gung-ho comics icon isn't getting his own show, but instead will do a guest appearance at an upcoming Justice League story arch. The three-episode arch is titled "The Savage Time," and will also include a guest appearance by WWII flying heroes the Blackhawks. The Cartoon Network hasn't announced the date the arch will be broadcast, but made an statement that they expect it will get a 100% share of the Nerdsen ratings.

For "Fun With Referrals" I'm Charly Z. Good night.

A heartening quote from Douglas Cruickshank's review of Sarah Vowell's The Partly Cloudy Patriot:

...[Vowell] invokes the behavior of Willow on TV's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" as an object lesson in how Gore might reconstruct himself as likable without deserting his genuine wonky self. "Willow is not a self-hating nerd," Vowell writes. "She is a self-deprecating nerd. While Gore, like Giles [another "Buffy" character], is the butt of other people's jokes, Willow, a postmodern nerd, peppers her cerebral monologues with one-liners that make light of her own book learning."

Vowell calls that combo the nerd voice and insists it's a winner. "It's the self-deprecating impulse Gore lacks," she writes...

Now, if I could channel more Woody Allen and less Kurt Cobain when attempting that self-deprecation business...

Where Have the Moon Trees Gone?
By Michelle Delio
September 12, 2002

An Apollo 14 astronaut carried tree seeds to the moon and back more than 30 years ago, and now there are hundreds of fully grown trees on Earth. A scientist is trying to track down where all of them are.

The astronaut was former smokejumper Stuart Roosa, the tree seeds were "from redwood, loblolly pine, sycamore, Douglas fir and sweet gum trees," and the scientist is NASA's Dave Williams, who is attempting to locate all "450 or so" trees which sprouted from said seeds.

When Roosa blasted off on Jan. 31, 1971, he took a six-inch metal cylinder containing [the] seeds... According to mission records, the seeds orbited the moon 34 times.

Back on Earth, the metal tube burst during decontamination procedures. There were fears the seeds were too damaged to germinate. But virtually all survived after being shipped to Forest Service labs, eventually resulting in hundreds of moon trees.

Some went to national landmarks like the White House and Independence Square in Philadelphia. Others went to local governments; the then-mayor of New Orleans, "Moon" Landrieu, put in a special request. Some were given to foreign heads of state. But plenty of the trees ended up in out-of-the-way places.

I can visualize this turned either into an overheated, pulpy story for a 50s B-movie (Moon seeds sprout into deadly man-eating triffids!) or a nonsensical episode of the Super Friends (Feral moon trees threaten overtaking Metropolis!).

...Nah, who would watch such humbug?

Regarding wearable computers, I wouldn't mind becoming a gargoyle, warts and all:

...Instead of using laptops, [gargoyles] wear their computers on their bodies, broken up into separate modules that hang on the waist, on the back, on the headset. They serve as human surveillance devices, recording everything that happens around them. Nothing looks stupider; these getups are the modern-day equivalent of the slide-rule scabbard or the calculator pouch on the belt, marking the user as belonging to a class that is at once above and far below human society... The pay-off for this self-imposed ostracism is that you can be in the [Internet] all the time, and gather intelligence all the time.
— Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson