Listics

In a shamelessly self promotional love letter to Lauren Slater, a perfect stranger, perfect because she was a stranger and no blemishes had yet been revealed, not so much as a pimple on the ass, not even a slowly healing monkey bite indicating perhaps a wanton character or at least a personal interest in the erotic possibilities of the neck, Mr. R. Boy of Boulder, Colorado takes credit for the following:

Thesis #5: Human beings recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.

Mr. Boy goes on to explain that he has altered the text a bit, adding the emphasis in a hope, probably vain, that people would grasp the intent of the passage with the addition of this fillip of typography (I was going for soupçon there where I used fillip, but I was too lazy to dig up the ascii for a c-cedille, but then had to find it anyway to add this explanatory note and thus life proceeds, in nested recursion until we each find ourselves (or would that be our self?) on the bus to oblivion.)

Mr. Boy has provided another substantial alteration to the text that perhaps should be noted. In the marketing manual that was Cluetrain, the passage read “People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.” Now the difference between “people” and “human beings” is manifest, viz. the Preamble to the US Constitution wherein it was declared that “We the People of the United States of America…” a circumlocution that permitted the elision of many human beings from the protective shadow of the document. The convergence of meaning between “people” and “human beings” is not yet complete from an archaeological-linguistic perspective, and one can only wonder at the intention behind Mr. Boy’s misquote of the passage. Probably there is no darker purpose here than seduction, a modest enough intention, but I leave it to you, gentle reader, to contextualize, analyze, yes even lionize the author - though he can’t really hide them can he, his lyin’ eyes I mean. And given the immediate context of thesis five, that is to say, it’s precedent thesis four, wherein it is stated, “Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived,” I think we’ve caught Mr. Boy - or should I say MR. LOCKE! - yes! we’ve caught him out in another lie, a prevarication of the highest order, the assertion that this brilliant stream of thought flows uncontrivedly from his mind to your screen without even the intermediation of a spell checker, else how could it be asserted that this is an open, natural uncontrived voice?

I aks you.

PLUS

EQUALS

“Je t’embrasse…”

Now that’s the stuff of lingua franca.

Speak harshly to no one,
or the words will be thrown
right back at you.
Contentious talk is painful,
for you get struck by rods in return.

-Dhammapada, 10, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

Anne Galloway presents an article at receiver titled Mobility as world building/technologies at play. In it she says,

In-between spaces, such as the beach between the ocean and the land, are interesting examples of ambiguity and multiplicity. Anthropologists have long studied cultural rituals that create and shape these and other liminal spaces. Liminal spaces are thresholds or transitions from one state to another, such as the space between no longer being a girl and not yet being a woman. From competitive games to narrative performances, rites of passage often involve play as a means to create these new relations, to flow between ambiguity and certainty, multiplicity and singularity.

…

Artists have also playfully explored mobility and its boundary-blurring ability. In addition to film and animation, early attempts to introduce actual movement into works of art include Alexander Archipenko, Marcel Duchamp and László Moholy-Nagy’s kinetic sculptures. But it is Alexander Calder who is credited with the invention of the mobile. Calder’s mobiles hang from ceilings and walls; his standing mobiles involve fixed and moving parts, where the fixed elements do more than support the mobile elements; and his stabile sculptures suggest mobiles at particular points in space and time. Calder described his mobiles as nothing but moving elements, while Jean-Paul Sartre explained those movements as unpredictable but not random, limited but not determined.

Then she moves lightly from the cosmic bicycle to Noderunner, touching down at many enjoyable spaces here and there. Anne blogs at Purse Lip Square Jaw.

Llama dude versus monkey guy…

Locke wins this week’s creative use of brackets award for this bit… (Glossing “lift,” I prefer to think “sampling” over “plagiarism” [context making all the difference {that makes a difference, as qualified by G. Bateson in defining information}]).

I’ve been working all day and now I have to dash off to puppy class and I see that Chris Locke has written something really substantial… at least it has a lot of words in it… but I won’t have time to savor it until later tonight. So I’ll blog my disappointment and reflect briefly on this rare venture into delayed gratification for the sake of Molly the puppy. (If it was a business meeting I could blow it off and stay home and catch up on my reading!)