Fragano Ledgister @ 112.
I like that much better. So the next question is where? And when?
Teresa, the samurai reference did not jolt me. I took it as a reference to the "Katanas Are Just Better" trope. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KatanasAreJustBetter
While the site's banner page says TV Tropes, my site mining has revealed an equal number of movie and book references as well. I would say TVtropes.org to be a popular entertaiment reference site. However, the Samurai and their "signature tool" have been codified into pop culture. Nightsky explained the attraction for exotic cultures better, and with examples, so I'll just ask you to re-read comment #32.
I read the excerpts from James Arthur Ray's "message" as a mix of pop culture and pop science references spin doctored into a self-help format by a confidence man. So, for me, the sudden inclusion of the samurai wasn't jarring at all. In fact, it more or less rang true -- if one buys into the "I'm Superman and you can be a Superman, too!" worldview. Ignoring, of course, that he's actually holding classes on how to be Batman...with a sword.
Also, Peruvian Mysticism blending neatly into Samurai-ness does make sense if one assumes that a Tom Cruise-esque samurai equals Jackie Chan flicks equals Kung Fu (the movie and TV series) with some "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" added for color.
Xopher @ #33
Wait.... I thought those were called conventions. Are you proposing Making Light start it's own "SpiriCon"?
#46.
According to my Japanese friend, English words and syllables aren't very compatible with the Haiku form. Tongue twisters, however, mostly translate intact. At least as far as we could tell.
This is not the brilliant fall day
found on cards for posting by mail
or captured in photos for posting by blog.
Gray skies weeping gray mists and sobbing gray rain
have muted the atumnal fires of maples, pears, and oaks into sodden embers.
Leaves spackle the landscape, their scurrying laughter silenced.
The breezes wind their damp noses and clammy fingers
into every gap
and down every neck.
The only sharing done is an exchange of miserable looks
as hunched people stride with added purpose to their portals.
Cars wave intermittently to each other in odd, syncopated beats as they hush by each other.
The birds are not flying.
The beasts are not browsing.
All are snuggled in nest and den.
This is the weather where people chant mantras
(coffee, cocoa, mocha
tea, tisane, chai
cider hot, cider spiced
my-oh-my)
and wail at the coming cold
(Gimme soup! Hot! Hot!
Gimme bread! Fresh baked!
Gimme food! Fill up!)
knowing there is no hibernation
other than what we find under the covers.
Charlie Stross at #56
*snerch*
As a duly registered and voting citizen of the country I share with Obama.... I didn't vote for him. I didn't vote for McCain, either. Both the Democratic and Republican parties manage to tick me off long before I am able to cast a ballot.
My personal response has been along of the lines of "Really? That's nice. I guess."
Any awe I have for the Nobel is tempered by the fact of how people get nominated and the fact that a committee decides who wins. I'm a cynic where governments, institutions and committees are concerned.
I do wonder how many Nobel prize winners attend the IgNobel ceremony the following year.
Fidelo @ #5
Exactly!
I grew up knowing man had walked on the moon. As a science fiction reader, being able to walk on the moon and other extra-terrestrial objects is part of my operational mythology. It has been done, and will probably be done again. It's a goal, just not a new, exciting one.
It's all about context.
I've been to gem and mineral shows where they have displayed a piece of moon rock (encased in an acrylic pyramid and guarded by police). When all was said and done, it was just a rock encased in clear plastic. (They had no flyers, posters or other information supporting the display).
Showing what the Peekskill meteorite did after it ended it's flame lit descent... that's something people can wrap their imaginations around. That's story.
OtterB @44 Since we seem to be heading in the same general direction...
The farmers and patrollers should be friends,
Oh, the Farmers and patrollers should be friends.
One group links their fates with strings,
T'other's fixed on growing things,
But that's no reason why they can't be friends!
Frontier making folks should stick together
Frontier making folks should all be pals.
Malice scouts court the farmers' daughters
Farmers court patroller gals.
I never learned to ride a bike. Growing up on a farm in the American mid-west, it was either my feet or four wheels.
I do like to walk, though. I love discovering the quiet secluded places framed by an opening in the trees or a fold in the hills. The shape of valley unfolding around the winding courses of a watershed when seen from the tiny headwater of a small stream is a wonderful thing -- like a leaf knowing the whole tree all the way down to the tip of the smallest root. Second to that joy of discovery are the conversations I have with my muse. Much like Abi and her cycling, walking gives me time and headspace to work things out and be creative. Using my feet allows my imagination to go on longer journeys into other places, some unreachable or unrealizable by ordinary means.
#5 is right. Wrestling aligators is the perfect term.
My first quilt was a 90" x 90" 16 patch for a friend for her combined birthday/christmas. The recipient just wanted a plain front and back, quilted, and thin bed covering. (Think something along the lines of a very thin duvet.) I made the mistake of starting one side with a fairly small african violet print because I coulnd't find two solid colors that both she and I would like. After matching the lavendar (easy) and the white (difficult) from the flowers, I ended up making one huge sixteen patch. The quilting consisted of a modified compass rose inside a diamond.
Wrestling that aligator was a lot of work, but the payoff was worth it. My friend rolled up in it that night to sleep and uses it year round.
What a beautiful quilt! I'm passing the link along to my quilting sister
Also, the pleats are not mistakes. They're "Design Elements". I'm a big fan of the TLAR method (aka: That Looks About Right) when it comes to sewing, knitting, crochet or anything else hand made. If I wanted perfection,
#250 ::: Teresa Nielsen Hayden
I've always suspected there was a class agenda in the idea that adults have no right to indulge themselves in unproductive entertainment, or to hope for fufilling work. I know you didn't discuss the "fulfilling work" half of that, but in my experience those two memes travel as a pair.
I brushed past it and deliberately didn't address it. I am well aware the attitude exists that work shouldn't be fun. Otherwise, they wouldn't call it "work." I don't know if it's a class agenda, a moral agenda or a socio-political* agenda. I do know that I tried the "fulfilling work" gambit. All the reponses, in the end, were reduced to, "But I have bills! The sooner I get my loans paid off, the sooner I can do what I want. I can't wait around until I find something I like!"
It's not just college kids, either. I have a sister who is stuck in a job she hates, but can't leave it because she can't find a higher paying one to go to. Taking a cut in pay or settling for a lateral tranfer into another job is not an option. I think that ties into your suspicions about executives with perks and financial traders with big bonuses. Money is a metric everyone understands. Happiness and fulfillment are too subjective.
TNH
What's funny is that there's no matching condemnation for indulging yourself in stupid, mindless entertainment when you come home exhausted after work. It's still unproductive; you just don't enjoy it the way you enjoyed those childish things you supposedly put away.
In my experience, "mindless entertainment after a long, hard day" often includes those childish things we are supposed to put aside. I don't know if it's a lack of condemnation or the presence of an unspoken but widely acknowledged prerequisite that functions like an excuse. "I have no mind left, therefore simple, uncomplicated things that make me happy are finally okay." We are asked to justify our desires a lot. Ditto with explaining.
TNH
(I keep that set of suspicions filed next to the idea that it's necessary for executives to have lots of vacations and perks because their working lives are so stressful, and the one about how financial traders have to be given huge bonuses because otherwise they'll quit their jobs.)
I file these next to Office Politics and/or greed. If a top earner goes to his/her boss and says, "I'm unhappy with work and just sent out a bunch of resumes. So if you get calls, that's what it's about," the boss will usually try to keep that person around--situation allowing. If they can't improve the working conditions, they can improve the take home pay. That way, when the over worked employee finally does get some time, he/she can buy more happiness or a much desired status symbol. Then there are those that see the financial bribe in action and start working the system.
TNH
All our lives contain hard-to-solve problems, and it's appropriate for us to spend a reasonable amount of time and energy doing what we can about them. But why should we get told that it's our duty to spend all the rest of our spare brain power on questions which we already know are intractable? That isn't "being realistic." It's self-inflicted dullness.
The more anecdotes and arguments I read in this thread, the more I am inclined to write "Readers in the Hands of an Unselfish Meme" a la Jonathan Edwards^. My premise is that only selfish readers read for pleasure. Unselfish readers aspire to education, self-improvement and the redemptive act of working hard.
---
* It's a weird bit of EOE social legislation. I'm unhappy in my work, so you have to be unhappy in yours, too. You can't have fulfillment and a good wage with bennies. Pick one.
^ Lev Grossman's article and Nick Mamatas' defense of it both strike me as puritanical in the etymologic sense of the word rather the cultural one we've developed. They espouse the shining light on the hill attitude.
Russell Letson @ #249
I knew there was a reason I've been putting off growing up for so long.
Clifton Royston @ #253
I got a cautious eye and a "Interesting..." I seem to get that latter comment a lot.
Clifton, I think you, Russell and I all have the Peter Pan Syndrome. Kids of a certain age don't get it. Certain kinds of readers, do, no matter the age. I think we should start a Peter Pan Reading Group or a Peter Pan's Reading List. My most recent YA read was "Bloodhound" by Tamora Pierce.
Recommendations?
Nick Mamatas @196
The mere claim that Book A is good and Book B isn't as good is insufficient. As far as why so many people see "Death to pleasure! Read the hard, obscure, incomprehensible stuff because it is hard!" in comment and claims that contain none of those imperatives, I can only suggest a reread of PNH's comment #50.
I don't think it's about "Death to Pleasure" or PNH's @ #50 modern English Studies academia originated as a system of social control either.
I think it has to do with: 1) assumptions about work 2) assumptions about what it means to be "A Responsible Adult."
I helped a friend move a few years ago. When we packed up her library, she handed me Heinline's Stranger in a Strange Land to keep. She reminisced that the first time she read it, she and her husband had dissected the book so they could both read it at the same time -- not being able to afford two of them since they were both in college. The book she handed me was the one she bought for herself after their divorce. I knew she enjoyed science fiction, but her library was full of reference books (she was an architect and taught at the university where I work), histories and "literary works". I asked her why she had stopped actively reading SF -- as opposed to accepting occasional loaners from me.
Her response was a vague description of it being something she did when she was a kid, but life since then hadn't allowrd for it. I started quoting 1 Corinthians 13:11. When I was a child, I talked like a child.., She paraphrased the ending to "...When I became a woman, I put childish ways behind me. Then told me that was exactly right. Reading for simple enjoyment was kin to a child's playing. There was no value in it.
At work, I find myself mentoring college students. Getting the concept of "work should be fun and not just work" is difficult because all their lives they've been told "Being an adult means getting a job, paying your bills, saving for the future, getting married and having kids." Enjoyment is nowhere on that list*. Finding a job that they enjoy is a distant last to finding one that pays well, has good benefits, and won't take them too/will get them as far from home as possible.
Children have fun. Adults have obligations^.
So. Pleasure for pleasure's sake is by its very nature guilty. It produces nothing. It saves nothing. It prepares us for nothing. It only takes time and resources away from productive, responsible actions.
Reading for education or self-improvement or reading because it's work has far more value. For a given definition of value.
------
* Every so often I will quote The Princess Bride at work. More and more, I get blank looks, so I wind up pitching the movie (it being my first exposure to the tale). My latest intern thought it sounded good, funny, etc., but didn't actually do anything about it until the book was assigned for reading and in-class discussion. Once she had read the book she was all about renting the movie.
^ I shocked a teenaged niece** by admitting that I read YA, YA SF and YA fantasy. I was a grown up. I wasn't supposed to do that. She didn't buy my answer that I don't see the need to deprive myself of good fiction just because it was written for kids.
** I'm the "weird, but fun" aunt.
abi @ #12
I'll accept that people with academic degrees in English are (a) having fun with literature and (b) advancing the state of human knowledge, if no one in this thread tells me I'm wrong and stupid for liking what I like, or thinking about this stuff without the official toolkit.
I'm one of those with and English degree, but I never got beyond the bachelor's level. Abi is so right about the dominance games. It's even more apparent on the inside where the dedicated ones live.
In the end, the "you're ruining it* for me!" factor trumped everything else I wanted from my academic education. I'll never tell anyone what they're reading is trash, or stupid or not acceptable. Nor will I demand they explain why they like it -- or not. For me, it's enough that they read.
---
* "It" being my enjoyment of reading.
PNH @ #7 I am not interested in telling anybody that their reading tastes are wrong. I am extremely interested in how and why people read, and the purposes to which they put their reading.
First, I read to be entertained. I want to enjoy the trip that starts with the first sentence and have a good trip and an enjoyable time all the way to the last period. I like a strong narrative, interesting characters, and engrossing plot. Lacking a plot, some goal no matter how simple will do. Morals and/or messages are welcome -- as long as they are not preachy or try to hit me over the head with their improving ways. They are also optional. I have read plenty of good books that lack both moral and message. Again, it's all about me being entertained -- and I have ecclectic tastes.
Second, I read to learn. (This is mostly for my non-fiction selections, although it can apply to my fiction, too. Alt-History is the best example of this.) Writing style is important. I may be very interested in the subject, but if the author bores me, the book goes away.
Third, I read to share. My friends and siblings and I swap books out all the time. We like to talk about them, too. Or not. The best part of making a new friend is the ability to borrow from their personal libraries and finding a gem I never knew about before. In some cases, I discover a new author that I must collect.
Fourth, I read to find enduring tales and "new friends, soon to be old". I'm currently going through my personal library (I do this about every 5 years) because I'm out of shelf space. The stories that don't stand up to multiple readings get culled. With these stories, the journey is as important to me as the destination.
Fifth, I read to suit my mood. Some people crave certain foods. I crave certain stories. There is something to be said for a Popcorn Novel at the end of a long, aggravating day where all I do is solve other people's problems. Ditto for Bubblegum, Fluff and Pure Escapism. I've heard some people call these "guilty pleasures." I call them essential. Some days, I just have to buckle a swash or go crazy. Other days, I feel a driving need to improve my mind with Something Autodidactish.
#402
At my day job, I have to occasionally give directions. I am also a disaster first responder for the bigger problems like buildings blowing up/over/down.
I'm also very familiar with addresses/locations like "the bean patch", "The McLeod place^" and "Kongs" which means nothing to people outside my family. The idea that the two communication systems over lap that much.... *facepalm*.
I know of one instance where the caller, in a three way with the dispatcher and ambulance, had to correct the dispatcher as in "go one more mile west, then turn right."
----
^which is exactly like your "turn left at the brown house" only the house and outbuildings were torn down fifty plus years ago so it's just an empty field.
#402
At my day job, I have to occasionally give directions. I am also a disaster first responder for the bigger problems like buildings blowing up/over/down.
I'm also very familiar with addresses/locations like "the bean patch", "The McLeod place^" and "Kongs" which means nothing to people outside my family. The idea that the two communication systems over lap that much.... *facepalm*.
I know of one instance where the caller, in a three way with the dispatcher and ambulance, had to correct the dispatcher as in "go one more mile west, then turn right."
----
^which is exactly like your "turn left at the brown house" only the house and outbuildings were torn down fifty plus years ago so it's just an empty field.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 29 |
| 2008 | 23 |
| 2007 | 39 |
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