Most interesting of all was a glancing reference to the strange jewelry vaguely associated with Innsmouth.

Kwoth is the creator and mover of all living things, vaguely associated with the sky and sometimes said to be like the wind.

Perhaps the mass suicides of Jonestown, Guyana, the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York (associated vaguely with one anti-American Islamic congregation) and The Times welcomes letters from readers.

So his official renaming in a form vaguely associated with a traditionally Republican religiosity, but unprecedented as a cognomen, may have served to show that he owed his position to the approval of Rome and its gods, and possibly his own unique, elevated, "godlike" nature and talents.

"We as a species are optimized for face-to-face communication, so only two of these - the reading and replying - are vaguely associated with that," Mr. Kock said.

No one knew how he achieved the stern task of living, but his name was vaguely associated with racing tissues.

Lankford said that "Anyone vaguely familiar with songs associated with Leadbelly will wonder what a group of vibrant middle-class white kids know about picking cotton or sleeping in the pines all night."

TROPIC OF CANCER has been vaguely associated with two other books, ULYSSES and VOYAGE AU BOUT DE LA NUIT, but in neither case is there much resemblance.