QUID MALMBORG IN PLANO:
A mysterious phrase which recurs in BOZOS.
It was first exclaimed by the discoverer of FUDD'S LAW. No
one (yet) seems to know its true origin, although it is said to have
been written on a cigarette lighter that Phil PROCTOR used to have,
and belonged to a person named Malmborg, who lived in Plano, Texas.
This has since been confirmed by Peter BERGMAN.
Another listener is convinced that he saw this pseudo-latin phrase
inscribed in a drawing by Albrecht Duerer.
The phrase seems to be a mixture of latin and middle-english: "Quid"
may be translated from the latin root meaning "this/something/that",
and "plano" simply means "flat/horizontal/smooth".
The nearest translation of "malmborg" we are willing to conjecture is
based on the Middle-English word "malm" which the OED tells us is a
type of man-made chalky clay, which is often worked into "malm-bricks",
so perhaps this phrase refers to the conversion of this(quid) clay
into flat (plano) bricks, as consternation turns to lucidation.
The mixture of ME and latin, together with the brick reference, may
indicate a Freemason influence, but this is wild conjecture on the
part of the editor.
Many other theories abound. For example:
malborg sounds suspiciously like 'malbolg' (malbolgia?). Malbolgia,
as read-ers of Dante may remember, are the "bad pockets" of Hell,
where the corrupt and treacherous souls simmer. Here one finds
thieves, hypocrites, whores and panderers. Schismatics are ripped
to pieces and reconstituted in an assembly-line manner, liars are
steeped in a sea of shit. It is lower than that part of
the Inferno where the sensual and brutal are found, and just above the
lowest part, where Judas and a coterie of betrayers sit. Dante puts
several nasty folks in Malbolgia, including a few popes. Nixon probably
has (had) a reservation.