Shall we change the group name?

It's been moved and seconded that we change the name of this group to "The Drones' Club".

(I seem to be alone in thinking that "The Master" is both appropriate AND unambiguous.)

So I'll leave this thread up for a few days of discussion to see if we have a consensus. (Just to make sure that everybody is happy.)

The Drones Club would be excellent. Wodehouse is a master, but I feel too many people apply it in other ways. Simply seeing the title doesn't say 'Wodehouse!' to me. Or other would-be Drones. :)

here is my vote for The Drones Club.

I think Drones Club was my idea. On that basis, it is clearly a stroke of genius, and the product of a first-rate intellect.

Or am I biased ?

Not biased - you are a card-carrying genius! (the card is in the mail...). I agree that the drones club is clearer. I recently read the Master by Colm Toibin, which was about Henry James, so I get a little confused every time I see the group name.

I happened to like the name "The Master" since Plum was a true master of his craft who has never been bettered before or since, while when I hear the name Henry James I usually just think "turgid prose"! However, since someone over on the "Humor" thread is now referring to William McGonagall as "The Master" (rolls eyes) I guess I will now also have to throw my hat in and agree with the motion to change the name of this group (and as quickly as possible, please!).

But NOT to "The Drones Club" ... puh-lease! We can do something much better than that. You might as well just call it "The Wodehouse Group" and be done if you are inclined in that direction! So what to call the group ... ?

Not "Plum Sauce" or "Wooster Sauce" because both those names have been used before (or maybe are still in use). I would possibly have liked to see a name that utilized Oofy Prosser in it, but now I think about it, that name may have been used as the title of a column in either Punch or Private Eye back in the seventies.

Let's see now, long before there was The Da Vinci Code there was Da Code of Da Woosters and it was a real code too:

(1) Thou shalt not let down a pal.
(2) Thou shalt not scorn a woman's love.

Almost all the Wooster/Jeeves stories have Bertie struggling to uphold either one or both of these commandments, with Jeeves finally bailing him out at the end after it looks like Bertie has made an irretrievable bungle of things.

So let's get hip and now with the group name ... how about: "Da Wooster Code" or even "The B. Wooster Code"?

Hey, at least they are better than "Bloodline of the Earl of Worplesdon" or "Monty Bodkin's Flying Circus"!

Maybe it's foolish of me, but NOT having been a Wodehouse fan (bless the man) in the 70s - nor even till very recently (lamentable, I know) - I appreciated the fact that 'The Drones Club' would be clear even to a novice. Frankly, I should like to say I belonged to The Drones Club - but I'd also like others to recognize the group easily enough. Somehow the Code Names not only fly too close to the horrid Da Vinci, but fail of the Sauces' inherent savor.

All of which aside, my gloomy evening owes much to P.G., no matter how you dish the plum sauce.

Leave it to Psmith's delighting me.

Oh yeah, the Psmith books are great - have you tried Psmith in the City ?

Well, I stand by my earlier stroke of genius, but if you need a second suggestion, we could always call it The Friends of Gussie Fink-Nottle !

LOL. I love that one - however unseriously. Haven't yet read Psmith in the City, but assuredly will.

I am not a big fan of group name as shibboleth, so I would even go so far as to suggest it include Wodehouse. Save the esoterica for inside. Drones Club at least does not suggest a Dr. Who villain or a sitcom actor turned televangelist.

Actually, MMcM, I think it would be more of a Pshibboleth! :)

:D Very nice, Rule42!

What a PATHETIC excuse for a group this has turned out to be. :( It's got over 30 members and has been in existence for over six months now and yet y'all still cannot agree on a name for it! They say a llama is a horse designed by a committee but at least that feckless committee eventually worked together and actually produced something. One can only dread to think what this totally dysfunctional brain trust would have produced if it had been assigned that horse project instead!

Might I gently suggest you all migrate over to the "Why Wodehouse?" thread in the Humor group instead?

(I finally finished -- while reading in and out of several other books concurrently, as is my feckless habit -- McCrum's recent biography of Wodehouse. I will be posting my thoughts on McCrum's work over there in the next several days.)

And here is Frank Bough with the latest singular word usage results for this thread ...

Sounds of an old fashioned teleprinter (like the one that used to be featured on the BBC television sports program Grandstand) clacking away in the background.

FB: "And this late result just in from Sheffield ..."

Everyone watches as the teleprinter unevenly splatters the letters across the bottom of the page displayed in the middle of their TV screens.

feckless ....... 2 (PlumCrazy 2:23:07, perchmerle 2:23:07)
shibboleth ... 1 (MMcM 12:4:06)

FB (reading from a piece of paper just handed to him by a man wearing humungous headphones): "We just heard that a late equalizer by Rule42 (12:6:06) in the dying moments of this terrifically exciting cup tie was ultimately disallowed by the referee because it contained a silent 'P'. This critical decision caused thousands of fans waving red flags to invade the pitch in an attempt to throttle the ref once the final whistle blew, and scores of extra police had to be dispatched to the terraces of the Hillsborough Stadium after violent fighting broke out in the stands as a result of this controversial last minute reversal.

The word feckless will now move on to meet the winner of today's other quarter-final cup tie fixture played over at Maine Road. And what an upset that was! MrKris's giant-killing word bloviate - from the depths of the fourth division Social Darwinism thread - continued it's magnificent singular word usage cup run by eliminating last year's champion word Eschatology by a score of 4-nil. So the upstart word bloviate will now match up against feckless in the first leg of the semi-final tie of this highly competitive and fabulously entertaining word competition which is scheduled to be played at Old Trafford some time later this year.

Now back to David Coleman over at Kempton Park for the latest update on today's horse racing results ..."

Picture fades to the sounds of the fake teleprinter still clacking away in the background displaying even more late-breaking singular word usage results.

Moved, seconded, and we seem to have what appears to be a consensus - "Drones Club" it is. Please adjust your bookmarks accordingly.

>16 AsYouKnow_Bob:

Maybe we could call it The Master Drones Club? Whatever happened to the genteel art of well-mannered compromise?

Oh BTW, please note that singular word usage is now the new AT&T text messaging.

Well done, and thank you, Bob. All 'shoulds' aside, one cannot now be confused about the purpose of the group. Perhaps it will even attract a bit more vim to this admirable but less-than-rollicking club. :)

Rule42: it is not my day for creating verbal confections, but I can indulge myself in them with more than a modicum of gratitude. To the master word-cum-sport-cum-pastry chef: my thanks, and I salute you!

>18 Eurydice:

I'm still really livid that in last year's singular word usage World Cup Final the French word for head-butt was unexpectedly defeated by the Italian word for shirt-tugging, because I had bet pots of money that the Italian word for sister-schtupper would win instead. :( Boy oh boy, after sitting through that fiasco of a game my advice is, whatever you do, stay away from hyphenated foreign words. They're just too unpredictable!

From now on I'm simply going to stick to betting on English words - because with English the outcome is usually much more certain. For instance, right now on a different thread, I have quite a heavy stake riding on the word colostomy ... :)

>19 Rule42:

Ooops, perhaps I shouldn't have posted that ... normally when I have money at stake I prefer to play my cards pretty colostomy chest!

(groans)

>20 Rule42: Already lost that bet, haven't you?