Black Cat Bone

Jimbo2 wrote:

John Mc wrote:

Jimbo2 wrote:Where is the Kath option?

Along any time now, hopefully!

BTW, and yeah, I can imagine you being a Vonnegut sort of guy, Jimbo, and I mean that in a strictly complimentary sense.

Thank you. I know you are not saying I write like him. I wish. If a BCBer is a Vonnegut it is Harvey K-Tel.

Harvey K-Tel wrote:What the fuck is wrong with paint-by-numbers?

Deebank wrote:Welsh

Harvey K-Tel wrote: I'm not fit to be a carbuncle on Vonnegut's little toe.

brotherlouie wrote:

sloopjohnc wrote:U R a Stylizt.

U iz a stylist, shurely?

Harvey K-Tel wrote:What the fuck is wrong with paint-by-numbers?

kath wrote:

sloopjohnc wrote:You can call bollocks to my bullshit, I'm just bangin' it real yo.

It's just my opinion and it's more a barroom discussion where I'm calling people on their affectations they don't use in real life.

I'm being provocative to engage discussion.

If it does, great. I wanna hear ya.

this is what i don't get, at all: the "affectations" part of it, the unnatural, never-in-real-life, puttin-on-airs thang you got goin on with it. i just don't get it. never mind the fact that i think of words, any words, from anywhere, as toys, ripe for the playin. igg that side of it completely, for the sake of engaging discussion. why are britishisms "affectations" exclusively? i mean, if i say c'est la fucquin vie, or je ne say-hey quoi, or laisse les bons temps rouler... am i flaunting my french "affectations"? do i have a secret desire to be french, to present myself as french, to rise up to some imagined airy heights of frenchification? if i call you amigo or i axe you que pasa, do i inwardly wanna be spanish? do i have dreams of bein katino? let's get even more narrowed in. after all, the principle should be the same, right? if i sponge up words from another regional dialect... if i soak up yute from brooklynese, just cuz i luvvvv the sound of it, and i insert it into my daily lingo (in much the same way as i've inserted nowt, for example), does that mean i have brooklyn envy?

i submit to you that *you* consider britishese some kinda higher, more gold-worthy language, whether it's from the shakespearean/dickensian/et ta bias we both went thru as lit majors, or whether it's from the broader notion of the quing's english.. whatever. there is SOME kinda diff level thing goin on in yer subconscious sloopgoop that makes you see britspeak as something someone would have affectations toward in the first place... britspeak as the 'air' in puttin-on-airs. what else would explain it? cuz lorddd knows you haven't come out against amigos. maybe you feel just as strongly about that and ya just haven't had the occasion to really come out against it. then again, maybe you don't see spanish as so exotic or airy, as some higher thing that poseurs and wannabes would shoot for imitating, seein as yer surrounded by it in caleef everyday and it sounds normal to you; i.e., non-affectatious. but how the principle behind it is any different... well, yer gonna hafta clear that up for me, senor manchadeconcha.

sloopjohnc wrote:Please translate to Esperanto.

John Mc wrote:

I will happily use foreign language phrases to pepper my everyday language.

But of course! Even though I only have a fairly modest grasp of French and Latin (and a very little German and Italian).

The basic functional/brutish attitude to language dumbfounds me. We might just as well resort to a system of physical blows and grunts. Language is expressive - we should use it as such. Therein also lies a very particular jouissance, as well as a proper enabling and communication of nuance and meaning.

I don't really want to talk to someone who doesn't even recognise the distinction between 'less' and 'fewer' - I mention that because I have (astonishingly) seen 'less' openly misused in print perhaps three or four times in the last couple of days - and really, I view it with the same distaste as I would someone spitting on the ground when they're talking to you because they think it's 'macho'. No, not at all, sir - it simply means that you're an illiterate (in many senses) cunt. You see, language should be about saying things, painting an artful picture, and that may be figurative, or it may not. Anyone who is unprepared to grasp that, well, I'm not prepared to cast myself in the role of some Mickey Spillane protagonist just to share. I may dumb down just to be friendly or under chemical influence, but I won't tolerate either wilful stoopidity, or deliberate linguistic deception. And just don't get me started on that....

As far as language goes, the French have the right idea. A lot of life may be shit, but the sublime can (and will) be truly sublime. We can invoke and live in beauty by talking about life in a beautiful and significant way. It is part of an invocation that elevates us.

Soi-disant flâneur, c'est moi.

Graham Murakami wrote:I do have a mental image of somebody doddery and unable to use a computer or even cope with modern life whenever I see two spaces after a full stop though.

John Mc wrote:

Graham Murakami wrote:I do have a mental image of somebody doddery and unable to use a computer or even cope with modern life whenever I see two spaces after a full stop though.

Really, Graham? Maybe you're just being provocative.

Graham Murakami wrote:I also find their unwillingness to explain where the problem is with a 'ten items or less' sign a little baffling.

Graham Murakami wrote:I find the snobbery of the anti-less brigade utterly extraordinary. I also find their unwillingness to explain where the problem is with a 'ten items or less' sign a little baffling.

I wouldn't start a sentence with a preposition, but I don't assume that anybody who does is on a par with Jeremy Clarkson. I do have a mental image of somebody doddery and unable to use a computer or even cope with modern life whenever I see two spaces after a full stop though.

Bleep wrote:I appreciate Orwell's stance and value the power of brevity, but I do think that his approach and its legacy has led to the propensity for people to reshape the language to their own ends whilst keeping within those narrow parameters. Whilst language will always be bent, twisted and amended in unexpected ways, the distrust embedded in the taste for the more unusual or exotic in our ever-expanding and changing lexicon has resulted in crimes such as changing nouns into verbs to slot into that philosophy. Abhorrent words like "monetise" sum up for me this unfortunate fashion.

Bungo the Mungo wrote:Orwell was right and a lot of people here would be well served to heed adhere to his advice.