Thursday, 30 October 2008

Identity fraud strikes! Hugo the Hippo has a 1970s Hungarian doppelgänger!

I'm not sure what to make of the discovery that there's another Hugo the Hippo out there -- quite how he managed to assume my identity a decade before I came into existence I'll never know, but he seems harmless enough. The plot, as far as I can work out, gets resolved by the Sultan of Zanzibar ordering that Hugo be looked after for the rest of his days; I'm taking this as before-the-event social realist codespeak for my brilliant idea about finding a châtelaine to keep me!

The only sensible explanation I can find is offered by one of the more enlightened Encyclopaedists, wondering whether his best novel was really

copied from the life of Tristram Shandy, unless the dealings of Jacques the Fatalist and his master happened to precede this work, and that Parson Sterne is the plagiarist, which I don’t really believe as I have a particular esteem for Monsieur Sterne who I distinguish from most of the writers of his nation, who make a habit of stealing from and insulting us.

Producers of Hungarian anime, on the other hand, should perhaps best stick to voodoo dolls!

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