For most of recorded history, people married for logical sorts of reasons: because her parcel of land adjoined yours, his family had a flourishing business, her father was the magistrate in town, there was a castle to keep up, or both sets of parents subscribed to the same interpretation of a holy text.
I guess the reasons of the peasantry for not marrying were not often recorded.
Is there some equivalent to Betteridge's law of headlines about disregarding articles about whatever "we" are supposedly doing?
Obviously there's the Lone Ranger joke, but I meant something a bit more than that.
I'm pretty clearly not the target audience for this, but I too found the "we" grating.
Not really relevant or applicable to myself either, but I still read it, because I find people different from me somewhat interesting and try to avoid terminal narcissism. I am certainly not always offended that my demographic markers are not included in every discussion.
Too soon for topic change? But is it? Does Amber Heard deserve 1/2 of Johnny Depp's net worth after one year of marriage? Is Depp selling his village in the South of France to become liquid for the divorce settlement? Did you ever imagine Depp would not get a pre-nuptial?
In some ancient cultures, people as annoying as Alain de Botton were executed.
I didn't even notice that he's the author! Ugh. Ogged, what's become of you?
Perhaps we have a latent tendency to get furious when someone disagrees with us or can relax only when we are working; perhaps we're tricky about intimacy after sex or clam up in response to humiliation. Nobody's perfect. The problem is that before marriage, we rarely delve into our complexities.
I realize that these are only examples, but really, are these not going to come up prior to marriage in the course of a relationship heading marriagewards? Not always, fine, but really, Alain, intimacy after sex?
I skimmed the remainder of the article and pronounce it trash, whose rare gestures at reasonable points have been made thousands of times before and thousands of times better.
He has a video
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6R8NNLQbQNU
He pulls what I think is a dick move at the 22:20 mark
What a strange mix of smart, obvious, and wrong.
Now I'm wondering what answer I could/should have given to "and how are you crazy?" had thus I been queried when last I was on the dating market. I should say: which of the many possible answers it would have been helpful to give.
Is there some equivalent to Betteridge's law of headlines about disregarding articles about whatever "we" are supposedly doing?
I hereby declare this "Thorn's Law": any headline that contains the word "we" is not about a group that contains you.
Is that the best phrasing?
We are the 98%.
We are the world.
We are the champions.
We represent the lollipop guild.
Some New Inquiry Posts Read Today
My Oriental Father On The Words We Use To Describe Ourselves
Abdellah Taïa the first Moroccan author to come out as homosexual, uses the pronoun "you" a lot. It is an attempt to universalize individual experience? Example:
"So many people and institutions are against homosexuals that, as a homosexual, you can't waste your time by trying to convince them that you're a good person. I understood that by the time I was twelve or thirteen."
Just finished a chapter in Julia Bullock's book about 60s proto-feminist Japanese women writers and Kurahashi Yumiko's novel Blue Journey is written entirely in second person, effectively in the scenes of abuse for example, gendering the reader female.
||
On day two at [Vacation Destination], the menu is: "Pork Loin au Caribe, lentil pilaf, pavlova with strawberries and watermelon."
Let's see if the destination is ever guessable from the cuisine!
|>
I read the link in 20.1 a couple days ago, and it's quite good.
I assume I'm not supposed to guess
On the menu at Galt's Gulch, as the inhabitants turn to cannibalism after running out of food: Roark Loin.
27: The steel drum part from before points in that direction as well.
||
I can't believe I just spent an hour trying to find out which 2nd person pronoun(s) Kurahashi uses in Blue [Dark] Journey
Kurahashi:
You squatted [over a mirror] in a horrifying posture above your own image, eyes glittering like those of a crazy woman as you wrung out all the knowledge you could [from this experience]. You figured it would be cleverest to make a virtue out of necessity and intoned like a curse, I am a woman, I shall become a woman. . . . That is, you thought you would have to perform as a woman; that would be fine; there was no other way for you to attain liberation and revenge.
Bullock says:"where the reader is constantly
interpellated (or even verbally assaulted) by an accusatory "you" that places him or her in the position of the protagonist, as object of the gaze."
I really doubt it was "anata" or "jibun" It can be a really big deal, even in a work aggressive and transgressive, and an untranslatable big deal.
(Kurahashi did her dissertation on Being and Nothingness, was accused of plagiarising Michel Butor with this novel, and moved to NYC for a while)
|>
After you guys figure out my colleague's destination, we can guess what series of events led to 31.
27: The steel drum part from before points in that direction as well.
I was going to mention that but the game was to go just by the menus.
31 must be a new record, in terms of urple feats.
32: I'm guessing alcohol was a factor.
32: I'm just wondering about the capitalization. Typo? Autocorrect? Or a policy decision? "Sentence case shall supercede all other conventions."
Has no one yet linked to Botton's old "I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will" because everyone's presumably seen it already?
17 Thorn's had a good week. She's had both a law and a class of ekranoplan named after her.
Oh Barry, darling, I could tell you want my non-fantasy lifegS been like, but that would definitely ruin it all. This is w pleasant imaginary world.
Why Does Alain de Botton Want Us To Kill Our Young?
The setup in 28 is too glorious for that punchline.
30: You've probably solved this already, Bob, but looking at the summary on amazon.jp, the narrator is "anata" and her lover is "kare".
38 is magnificent and perfect.
And the original review that spawned the crazy-hate is also perfect. I kind of despised that book when I read it, but couldn't articulate why.
Wow. Both the review at 46 and the exchange at 38 are amazing and well worth the time.
Someone in the photolithograhy field needs to clone de Botton's skin since it's got to be the thinnest layer in the universe. The best part of Crain's review was where he describes de Botton being outplayed by the accounting firm chief, stung by a seeming belief that as the smartest man in the room he could just wing it with some dumb business drones. The book, review and his response could be packaged as "Pretensions and Pettiness of a Philosophe."
OT:
This is a bit of a random thread, so seems ok.
There was a post about a book called "Secret Coders" the other day: I bought it for my 13 year old (is interested in coding, hasn't done much, likes graphic novels), and she's just sent me a message (she's away) to say she loved it and can't wait for the next one. So thanks to J Robot for the recommendation!
God, I lose it every time at "You present yourself as 'nice' in this blog (so much talk about your boyfriend, the dog etc)." de Botton's greatest literary contribution. (True fact: lourdes was once on an airport shuttle with the man, although he'll have to fill in the details.)
Late to the show but I'm with Flip et al. If he's already been executed I'll happily watch a re-enactment using his cold body.
I'd definitely seen the review/response in 38 before (maybe a previous link from here, in fact) but had forgotten about it. So nice to see that his philosophical cool isn't just talk.
From elsewhere on the blog linked in 41, I strongly endorse this: "Even now, there are people who try to build their identity on the fact that they really love reading - they're such a nerd haha, they don't go out drinking at night, they'd far rather curl up with a good book. What books? Oh, all books are great; Mein Kampf, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the latest from Michael Deacon; I just love books."
I associate the "books! yay!" attitude with this bookstore, the crappy "festival" Litquake, and the SF Bay Area generally.
The weekend will keep me too busy to give 53 more than a passing heartfelt endorsement, although booooy it also seems like a glorified "you're so basic," since the targets will be 95% female. Guys talk about reading in a different annoying way, where they try to impress you with the books they have ingested. It's kind of a subtle difference, but a real one. (My kid has practically tackled me to get me away from the computer in the course of composing this comment farewell, flames will be perforce ignored)
Hmm, I somehow agree with both 53 and 54. I guess my view is that women are great, the bay area is full of twits, and people would be better off just STFUing about how much they read.
And on further investigation (ie, clicking through) the guy who runs the blog linked in 41 appears to be a total cock and ignoramus, so fuck that.
The gender element noted in 54 is more than fairly noted.
I liked 53, but the linked post is terrible. Anyone who defends incivility in this age should be murdered.
Endorse 56 and 58. I still endorse 41, though, because a good insult is a literary form with it own value, even though it doesn't advance discourse. And 41 is one well-turned insult. This is consistent with executing Youtube commenters, because their insults are stupid.
And 53 is stupid:
they're entirely incapable of getting a decent playground insult to land on any one individualMeet candidate Trump.
But we are now oversupplied with insults, even good insults, and undersupplied with everything else.
Oh, I'm not endorsing any of the rest of the post.
Making my irregular excursion to Sam Kriss, within a piece defending the leftist art of personal invective I found he uses an attack on Alain de Botton as an example, among many others. Recommended entirely on reputation, I haven't time to read it.
"Does Alain de Botton actually fuck? And if he does, then what could that kind of monstrosity actually look like?
Alain de Botton is the most banal man alive and the most banal man to have ever lived,"
But Kriss, as you might expect from my appreciation, does tend toward the philosophical
Omigawd. For the record, I had never heard of Botton before this post. What do you people read?
These quotes are amazing! Astonishing!
This mushy nothingness can take the form of pointless tautology ('In a meritocracy, success comes to seem earnt - but failure deserved'), excerpts from the Dictionary of Twee Vacuousness ('Magnanimity: the one who was right does not say 'I told you so,' the one who was wronged does not seek vengeance'), outright untruth ('Choosing a spouse and choosing a career: the two great decisions for which society refuses to set up institutional guidance'), inspirational pap ('Our real motivation comes from people who don't believe in us'), and the final spluttering descent into total incoherency ('The end logic of our relationship to computers: sincerely asking the search engine "what should I do with the rest of my life?"').
I agree, the man should be shot.
Major league pwnd, as in made a fool of myself. Sorry. Who follows links anyway?
Wow, a subject even bob can't find a way to troll.
Oh, I could, the most recent Sam Kriss post on cvility leads toward its end to a discussion of Bruenig, Neera Tanden, and Sady Doyle with three internal links to most excellent pieces. But affaire de Bruenig has frankly disheartened and discouraged me. I probably read LGM comments too much.
Speaking of Which, the kind civil gentlewoman bspencer led me, twice in one post to ask:
bspencer:"Chuck Tingle continues to knock the wind out of the sails of folks like the Rabid Puppies by pounding them in the butt with kindness. (Thanks to OI for the link!)"
bspencer:"Megan McArdle has got some big old ovaries, I'll say that much. She's hopped on the "Trump is the fault of everyone but the folks who are voting for him train" and she's riding it straight up her own butt.
When and where I can I use such language toward spencer?
Oh, and pre-emptively, the point isn't that I want to or give a fuck, the point is to connect to the Bruenig story and stimulate just a little reflection about where privilege and power might actually reside.
And lest you believe I view the above in some simple gendered way, let's stipulate for the sake of the discussion that neither Neera Tanden on twitter or public fora or say Rachael Maddox wherever including on the air could say "specific person pounded in the ass" with impunity
Perhaps you might think I should be included with those two above, that it is precisely my status as privileged white het male that prevents me from being so vulgar in expression. I doubt it, but I'm open.
One of Kriss three great synergistic links, Amber A'Lee Frost on vulgarity in political discourse, especially before and during the French Revolution. Discusses Trump.
Now it could be in part that both spencer and Bruenig think that they are relative nobodies, so insignificant that nobody who "mattered" would notice or care about their vulgarity, or would even be weakened or diminished by noticing. spencer is probably right, Bruenig was in some way mistaken.
But again, I simply can't use that expression toward spencer without likely extreme consequences, whereas she could about me. In our shared miniscule corner of the Internet.
What this goes to is that any discussion of power, privilege, and intersectionality has to be very specific and concrete about contexts and social settings, and that it is the unjustified (the lack of justification itself being the source of power and advantage) shifting between various contexts that are a contemporary tool of rhetorical hegemony.
teofilo invited trolling
To explicate 72 penultimate, it is my contention that it is precisely the unjustified leap that Doyle and others made from Bruenig calling a woman "scumbag" to misogynistic rape and violent threats on the Internet that granted her the power to damage Bruenig. What such moments of intentional irrationalism serve is to force people to take sides beyond reason.
Loyalty (and "love") is generated by complicity in social transgression across contexts, the generation of borders by exclusion.
Loyalty (and "love") is generated by complicity in social transgression
"...hey, baby, let's go for a drink and then smash up some parking meters."
74,75: Closer than all that.
I got strokes in 67 and 69 for saying Botton should be shot.
74: (Takes notes) Huh, I'd forgotten how that works over the last twenty years.
You'd better see about the conversion rate between old-style parking meters and the new kiosks. There are only two or three a block. I'm pretty sure you don't have to smash a whole ten of those before you can put out without being thought too fast.
Careful there, that's what they sent down old cool hand Luke for.
For being slutty? I missed the beginning of that move.
I'm sick and in pain, cheer me up.
Are you well enough to swing an iron bar at a parking meter?
83: So a piece of rope walks into a bar. Bartender says "We don't serve pieces of rope in here" so the rope leaves. Hiding around the corner it twists itself into a set of interlocked loops, messes up its ends, and saunters back into the bar. The Bartender says "aren't you the piece of rope I just kicked out?" To which the rope replies "I'm a frayed knot!"
I suppose, at least if it is a hemp rope.
I'm not well enough to do much of anything. typing is hard. :(
I'm not even well enough to pee. Among my muscles that have seized up and won't relax is whatever controls your bladder opening. Apparently.
Isn't that like a medical necessity?
It's the Detrusor muscle, says wikipedia
yeah I'm going to go sit on the toilet again for a while. and daydream about waterfalls
Running the sink is like a little waterfall.
I was going to suggest searching for gifs or videos of cats being jerks because that always cheers me up, but I doubt that'll do much here. I hope you can relax.
Messily, the standard "Hope you feel better soon" seems utterly inadequate.
running water doesn't work as well as it used to, on me. Turns out the sound is a large part of the cue.
I wonder if everybody at Niagara Falls isn't wetting themselves? Especially when you're below the falls where everything is wet with mist anyway.
That must be why they gave everybody disposable shoes.
Detrusor was the lamest of the Decepticons.
Pardons for the ableist language. It's insidious. *checks OED for etymology of "insidious"*
Easy to remember, because if you lose bladder control then you have a detrusor problem and a trouser problem.
I'm not sure why, but I found this post from a Ukrainian (now in the US) academic - commenting on how Sanders and Clinton partisans are becoming increasingly bitter and nasty even as the primary winds down - to be grimly funny:
'Year 1980. A ragged old man walks out of a forest somewhere in the Soviet Republic of Belarus. He stealthily approaches a house on the outskirts of a village, catches a glimpse of a woman milking a cow in the yard, and whispers, "Sister, please, a glass of milk before the Nazis see me!"
"The Nazis?" the woman asks. "There are no Nazis. The war ended 35 years ago."
"You don't say!" the old guerrilla fighter exclaims. "And I've been blowing up trains and sabotaging railways this entire time!"'
"Then, sister, please a glass of milk before the Communists see me."
IMHMHB the entertaining point that when John Le Carre was writing "Smiley's People" in the late 70s and he wanted to pick a truly hopeless, pathetic cause for his old agent Vladimir Miller to espouse, he picked "Latvian independence" - because there was no way in a thousand years that Latvia would be independent, right?
And less than a decade after the paperback edition came out, there it was.
Did the British ever observe "Captive Nations Day"? Not that it was very a real holiday here, but Congress would always have something for the Baltic states.
And that it wasn't specific to the Baltics. Though I'm pretty sure that's where most of the focus was, politically.
When I was hiking, I took a picture of what I hope is the world's largest naturally occurring pile of porcupine droppings. Then I had to reset my phone so I lost the picture before I could put it in the pool.
I googled figuring that somebody might have taken the same picture, but no. They all took pictures of the scenic rock formation above all the porcupine shit.
Two women sitting across from me in the chemo room are having a robust theological discussion. I just moved to the other side of the room. Bonus: new recliner is much more comfortable.
The usual "Could God microwave a burrito so hot that he couldn't eat it?" one?
OT: When Kristol says that there will be a independent candidate with a real chance, does he mean Gary Johnson?
E. Meesily:
Hope you feel better soon!
Some kid humor: When your nose is cold and runny, you may think it is funny, but it's snot.
AIMHMHB The only time I have ever watched a genuine Nazi propaganda film was on a "Baltic Freedom Cruise" in around 1981, off the coast of occupied Latvia. The older generation of exiles were tearing up at the footage of the "Crusade against Bolshevism" -- SS men in uniform marching off to war -- until someone under 30 came into the room and freaked right out.
Later, possibly the same night, I started drinking with Vlad\imir Buk\ovsky and acquired a hangover so bad that when we "paraded"* through the streets of Helsinki my own mother failed to recognise me in the TV footage. She still has a photograph of me from somewhere on that cruise. I look at it and feel little envy for my youth, but, god, how I still yearn for the cigarette I had in my mouth.
*achieved intermittent bipedal gait
110: I know where there is a tree, planted in honour of the captive nations, with a plaque and everything and completely forgotten, near a council office block in Bradford.
Gary Johnson, who was an actual governor, will run on the Libertarian ticket.
121: When the tree dies, Lithuanian loses its independence.
Wait. Why were you on TV marching through Helsinki? Is that a thing over there?
Not as funny as a cat gif
Ms Messily said, "Could I choose a
complaint, I'd not feel such a loser
But I guess that I'll be
Stuck here till I pee
And control my rebellious detrusor
Properly:
Ms Messily said, "Could I choose a
complaint, I'd not feel such a loser
But I guess that I'll be
Stuck here till I pee
And subdue my rebellious detrusor."
124: in early 80s Helsinki, we were the news. But I can't remember how the footage made it to England
"Local youth seen parading with Nazi sympathizers."
Also, the face of the Island of Knife Crime.
She wasn't even bringing real drugs.
"The leggings Mrs Brogden was wearing were found to have a small hole in the crotch area, thought to have been made purposely to conceal the package."
Nah, that was probably just normal.
There was a shooting in a park near here last night. Very exciting. He's not dead, shot in the leg. There were Twitter rumours of a chainsaw being involved, but it seems not.
A shooting plus a chainsaw is DOOM minus the exploding barrels of toxic waste.
I got drunk once with old Estonians at the Estonian house in Toronto and they sure were not too shy about talking about their pasts fighting with the Nazis.
Did the Latvian freedom cruise just side on up to Latvian waters and then look out longingly to get a glimpse of Latvia? That sounds like ... maybe not the most fun vacation.
That WAS R Tigre. Now this IS R Tigre, still being awesome.
Try to find the slightest hint of nuclear disarmament.
When has a President not even given lip service to nuclear disarmament at a major symbolic opportunity?
De Botton is even worse than I'd ever imagined!
138 is true. He even made a Billy Joel reference which is the very pinnacle of awfulness.
138 makes me glad all over again that de Botton didn't try to probe my vulnerabilities the time I was on the shuttle with him to the Cedar Rapids airport. He was dressed in a suit and had an affect that young I judged harshly as "office drone" before we started talking about books. He must have stolen my weapon of judgment that day, in order to use it against all the people in his Sorrows of Work book. His saying that I should try Proust if I liked Joyce was perfectly good advice, and he did not try to hand me a pamphlet on the life-changing power of the Recherche.
Isn't that his sole book that's kind of good?
Could well be! I haven't read them.
lurid disputes that I actually lost my weapon of judgment.
De Botton is even worse than I'd ever imagined!
You have no idea what it was like to live under his tyrannical media reign in the UK about 5-10 years ago. You couldn't move for inane opeds.
141: AFAICDimlyR it was ok. It convinced me to never ever read Proust, which I, at least, will count in its favor.