And another giftie for ma fishies; this is reposted almost a year after its first appearance; you will find shadows of several of our discussions--ever some hints of sparkly vampires!--all up in here, not to mention (or TO mention, I suppose...) a flat-out reference to the "d" word and its manifest; oh! and "low-brow" suggests both taste and some Potteresque notion of our (yes! your and my!) presumed (in some quarters) lack of the "n" word--yeah, but only the one WITH the sarcastic/are you effing KIDDING me quote marks around it...Dang! And Brandon--there is even a bit of reference to your question on feminism here--this sucker kinda covers it all! Enjoy!
http://tselfoninternets.blogspot.com/2008/12/kinkade-and-saintcrow-peas-in-pod.html
Read, please.
Karloffish, there you will find some points on the boy-girl/male-female/mine's-bigger-than-yours front.
And all of you will get another view and voice on, heck, how we tell ourselves the truth, including references to the individual, high- and low-brow(edness), mabbe some N words and F words--I dunno, read and THINK.
The author is a recent college grad whose work I have been following since summer. She speaks with sound and sage and powerful authority. This is a peer who has all her rhetoric in a row, and wrangles it like a cowgirl. You could do worse than read her, question her, question yourself through her.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Saturday, December 6, 2008
The "I" Word, Or: Where All the Effs and Ns Intersect
Another Happy Merry Days gift for youse who contemplate "n" words and such... 12/23/09 repost:
Integration. Now, there is an interesting word.
Because we too often limit ourselves, the sense that immediately springs to the 21st century mind is the one related to forced busing and a small black girl in a gingham dress with ribbons tied to the ends of braided pigtails clutching a belted bookbag as she is escorted by a cadre of uniformed, armed agents through lines of fat and vituperous white, middle-aged men spitting filth and lougies at and on her. And if that's where our association lies with that word, it's a damned fine place to go for meaning.
But consider, please: "intergration" and "integrity" share the same root, and their relationship goes deeper than that. Integrity is, afterall, the state that is achieved when and only when an individual has fully integrated all the values regarded by the larger community as being of the highest worth. It is not an easy state to achieve, nor it is an easy one to maintain. But it is the ideal within each and every society; it is the means by which we recognise and applaud heroism within the community.
Different communities, of course, have different value-sets. My brother's biker club recognises its heros according to different standards than my mother's writers group does. But those little communities are enfolded together within larger ones, and taking a god's view might give them the appearance of a mass of freshly-laid frog eggs or a zygote in hyper split-and-replicate mode or a Venn diagram on crack. You get the idea. There is a set of shared values recognised by the whole, regardless of the deviations that reveal themselves when individual groups meet on Saturdays at the library for poetry readings or at the clubhouse for cheers and beers.
It has been through our struggles across millenia with the "eff" words (fate, fortune, faith, free will and that fifth one, freedom) and the degree to which we are individually and communally empowered to wield them that we have spiraled onward toward the "N" word--through and around and leaping over the [faux] "n" word--and the path only tends upward because we manage to imbue ourselves, baptize ourselves, slake ourselves with integrity.
Integration. Need some? It's yours for the taking.
Integration. Now, there is an interesting word.
Because we too often limit ourselves, the sense that immediately springs to the 21st century mind is the one related to forced busing and a small black girl in a gingham dress with ribbons tied to the ends of braided pigtails clutching a belted bookbag as she is escorted by a cadre of uniformed, armed agents through lines of fat and vituperous white, middle-aged men spitting filth and lougies at and on her. And if that's where our association lies with that word, it's a damned fine place to go for meaning.
But consider, please: "intergration" and "integrity" share the same root, and their relationship goes deeper than that. Integrity is, afterall, the state that is achieved when and only when an individual has fully integrated all the values regarded by the larger community as being of the highest worth. It is not an easy state to achieve, nor it is an easy one to maintain. But it is the ideal within each and every society; it is the means by which we recognise and applaud heroism within the community.
Different communities, of course, have different value-sets. My brother's biker club recognises its heros according to different standards than my mother's writers group does. But those little communities are enfolded together within larger ones, and taking a god's view might give them the appearance of a mass of freshly-laid frog eggs or a zygote in hyper split-and-replicate mode or a Venn diagram on crack. You get the idea. There is a set of shared values recognised by the whole, regardless of the deviations that reveal themselves when individual groups meet on Saturdays at the library for poetry readings or at the clubhouse for cheers and beers.
It has been through our struggles across millenia with the "eff" words (fate, fortune, faith, free will and that fifth one, freedom) and the degree to which we are individually and communally empowered to wield them that we have spiraled onward toward the "N" word--through and around and leaping over the [faux] "n" word--and the path only tends upward because we manage to imbue ourselves, baptize ourselves, slake ourselves with integrity.
Integration. Need some? It's yours for the taking.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
So Few Hatch-Marks; So Much Meaning
Reposting for your edification, 12/23/09; Happy Merry Days!
...so.
So...
So, she's gone and added an "o" next to each "N" (and "n").
And it doesn't stop there.
She follows each with an ellipsis.
...
Whatever can it all mean?
...so.
So...
So, she's gone and added an "o" next to each "N" (and "n").
And it doesn't stop there.
She follows each with an ellipsis.
...
Whatever can it all mean?
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Rockin' (Finally!) the "N" Word(s)
So you come back to class after the weekend and find a weird-multiply-colored-time-liney-kinda-thingie on the board.
Right away you notice a few things, some of 'em really unimportant (do the colors mean anything? wait, some things are in quotes; others are unjderlined--does that mean anything?!)), but some others certainly so, right? I mean, why put a thing on a timeline unlesswise it is important, right? Right!?
For instance, at each end of the solid, black line that establishes several dates, there is a section of dashed lines, each capped with a capital "N", twice-underscored. That's gotta be significant.
Then we start to pick out some dates..."400 BC", "1215 AD"--well, we have talked our way between those two points, and we know that the first kinda stands well for the "ancient" lit we considered, and there was some sort of blather about 1215 being important in distinguishing the FOURTH "eff" word that only a couple of kids seemed to know much about...then the next date is 1381; and we've just finished The Decameron and have just begun The Canterbury Tales, both 14th century pieces, so that kinda figures.
Then we notice some narrative that seems to connect 1215 and 1381...Maybe we'd best try to figure out whether 1381 is as significant a date as 1215; after all, those are pretty specific numbers...
Dude! Check it out! Under the next date listed, also a very specific one, there is another "n", lower-case this time. And all the little narrative bits seem related...What the farkle, nimrod?!
Right away you notice a few things, some of 'em really unimportant (do the colors mean anything? wait, some things are in quotes; others are unjderlined--does that mean anything?!)), but some others certainly so, right? I mean, why put a thing on a timeline unlesswise it is important, right? Right!?
For instance, at each end of the solid, black line that establishes several dates, there is a section of dashed lines, each capped with a capital "N", twice-underscored. That's gotta be significant.
Then we start to pick out some dates..."400 BC", "1215 AD"--well, we have talked our way between those two points, and we know that the first kinda stands well for the "ancient" lit we considered, and there was some sort of blather about 1215 being important in distinguishing the FOURTH "eff" word that only a couple of kids seemed to know much about...then the next date is 1381; and we've just finished The Decameron and have just begun The Canterbury Tales, both 14th century pieces, so that kinda figures.
Then we notice some narrative that seems to connect 1215 and 1381...Maybe we'd best try to figure out whether 1381 is as significant a date as 1215; after all, those are pretty specific numbers...
Dude! Check it out! Under the next date listed, also a very specific one, there is another "n", lower-case this time. And all the little narrative bits seem related...What the farkle, nimrod?!
* * *
You know that MIDTERM I have mentioned every now and then? Well, you are continuing to be prepped for it, and the focus is getting tighter and tighter. Yes, A KNIGHT'S TALE is sooooooo about it. And so, too, will be the next film, the one that masquerades as some sort of "holiday" story. And this timeline? Oh, yeah. Better get explicatin' it. But please do not neglect that we have been considering the fundamental concept(s) I will be expecting you to expound upon ever since you read Aristotle's treatise on tragedy. It all truly is connected--can you make the connection? That, my darlings, fishes all, is the task.
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