It is a classic, Kevin. And it's one of those interesting intellectual games in which you have to be pretty good with the language to participate.

A game I've suggested to friends a couple of times (but as yet have not actually worked out the rules) would be to write a long convoluted sentence (and save it as such) then let Microsoft Word, with every grammar and spell-check at the ready, check it, and accept every suggestion offered. Clearly the more obfuscation you can work into the original, the more Word will struggle to find some totally stupid replacement. Then post the two together to show the before and after paragraphs. This would work particularly well with scholarly essays. The first thing I do when I install a new version of those Microsoft programs is to turn off all of that grammar check and change-spelling-as-you-type stuff or it plays havoc with complex ideas within really long sentences. But given a little leisure time, I'd like to pull a few of my best sentences out and see what ol' Bill Gates would do to them. Might be pretty funny.

SRS