“Bo,” said Jack, “I’m not sure we should be eating the Professor’s allergy medicine. There might be all kinds of side effects.” Bo popped a last pill in her mouth: “I assumed we would be ok,” she said, and chewed thoughtfully. “Now that you mention it, I wonder. . . ” She munched a moment longer, then swallowed. “Well, I suppose now we’ll find out.” And indeed they did: moments later Jack noticed Bo’s hat lifting off her head, carried by ears growing steadily longer and covered with fine hair. Awareness, the sting of hindsight, came over them. “Attention, donkeys,” came the Professor’s voice. “Assumption makes an ass of you and me,” he trumpeted —Bo squinted down her muzzle and decided not to correct him— “and you should be grateful for the small mercy that I am not American.” He sneezed suddenly. “Ach, my allergies, I must get you out of here and put you to work.” He called in a short hairy man carrying two rope halters and a bag of carrots. The Professor made introductions: “Tikitu de Jager will train you in pragmatics and ploughing.” Waggling the carrots enticingly he led them away.

Bo, Jack, and the Professor (either Calculus or Branestawm, I forget which one we gave allergies) are characters from examples in a joint paper I wrote with Michael Franke. I used similar examples in my dissertation but changed the names.

And what’s the point of the exercise? Well, perhaps this pdf will make it clearer. It’s a draft of the front cover of my diss. (Text is slightly different, and the colour-scheme is just one of several options I’ve tried; some others are blue and black on white (the first one I posted here), white and medium gray on medium blue, and white and blue on gray.)