All the Literature and Reading Stuff...

[BruceVC]

 

I've recently finished a deep novel and two books about politics. Now it's time for something lighter. Now reading Bottom of the 33rd: Hope and Redemption in Baseball's Longest Game. In 1981 the Rochester Red Wings and the Pawtucket Red Sox of the International League played a 33 inning game. I always knew about it but the back story is fascinating. 

 

If I recall correctly, wasn't Wade Boggs a participant?

 

 

I never thought of you as an avid  reader ....living out in the wilderness, having no creature comforts like electricity and paying homage to primordial earth spirits 

 

Do people generalize about people like you and assume you are what I suppose is a redneck, do they assume you are not informed of current events for example? It must be fun taking them apart with your impressive knowledge of many things 

 

Bruce, my impression of you is that you're really big on labels and pigeonholing people. More than anyone else on these boards anyway.

 

Well that seems to be the impression I create, despite the fact I really didnt want to offend GD

 

 

What are other examples of me labeling people off the top of your head?

[Leferd]

Ok, this is getting off topic...

 

Bruce, you've been constantly quick to make the assumption that if X makes statement A, and is from B, then surely this person's stance = C. Then you proceed to explain why this view is not correct and well hey, let's debate the topic and can you please elaborate on what you mean by xxx...It's a bit condescending. And no offense, but I hope you don't take this the wrong way.     

 

And no, I won't use specific examples or dig up old posts to back up my ad hominem attacks on your character.  <--that's a joke, but really, I'm not going to be bothered to look this stuff up. 

 

Anyways, I read this:

 

 

Jon's a bit of a spaz and Garfield really hates diets.

 

[BruceVC]

Ok, this is getting off topic...

 

Bruce, you've been constantly quick to make the assumption that if X makes statement A, and is from B, then surely this person's stance = C. Then you proceed to explain why this view is not correct and well hey, let's debate the topic and can you please elaborate on what you mean by xxx...It's a bit condescending. And no offense, but I hope you don't take this the wrong way.     

 

And no, I won't use specific examples or dig up old posts to back up my ad hominem attacks on your character.  <--that's a joke, but really, I'm not going to be bothered to look this stuff up. 

 

Anyways, I read this:

 

 

Jon's a bit of a spaz and Garfield really hates diets.

Of course I wont take offense, I appreciate constructive criticism. I believe in always trying to refine my posting etiquette

 

Its just I am a 0 and 1 person, I need examples for a point to resonate so I understand the context but I appreciate the point anyway

[ManifestedISO]

Oh man, I would spend all my lawnmowing money on a new Garfield book every year when the school book drive came around. I had plush toys of Garfield, Odie, and Nermal. I'm weird.  

[BruceVC]

Oh man, I would spend all my lawnmowing money on a new Garfield book every year when the school book drive came around. I had plush toys of Garfield, Odie, and Nermal. I'm weird.  

I also had Garfield stuffed animals....I use to have lots of teddy bears when I was young 

 

Because my mom raised us I actually ended feeling obliged keeping the bears, which were on my bed, much longer than I should have. Every time I said to my mom I wanted to maybe move them off  my bed she would say something like  "  you dont want to grow up too quickly " so I ended up having numerous teddy bears on my bed till I was 12-13    

[Gromnir]

Oh man, I would spend all my lawnmowing money on a new Garfield book every year when the school book drive came around. I had plush toys of Garfield, Odie, and Nermal. I'm weird.  

hmmm...

 

as a bloom county fan, Gromnir prefered the Bill the Cat parody o' garfield.  

 

 

go figure.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[ManifestedISO]

Ha, clearly Bill could never properly enjoy lasagna. I'm afraid it was 1983 when book drives were popular ... decades before anyone on this forum was in sixth-grade. Except Monte and Wals, but they don't post anymore. My favorite purchase was an NFL poster with all 28 teams. 

[Gromnir]

we were sixth grade (if we had gone to public school) in 81-82.

 

*shrug*

 

no lasagna though for bill. he drank to excess, smoked and free-based tender vittles. a "vegesexual" and bartles & james junkie, bill's long running affair with jeane kirkpatrick were not the kinda thing content that woulda' been appropriate in a jim davis comic. 

 

...

 

am pretty sure he ended up with donald trump's brain near the end o' bloom county's run.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Oerwinde]

Ok, this is getting off topic...

 

Bruce, you've been constantly quick to make the assumption that if X makes statement A, and is from B, then surely this person's stance = C. Then you proceed to explain why this view is not correct and well hey, let's debate the topic and can you please elaborate on what you mean by xxx...It's a bit condescending. And no offense, but I hope you don't take this the wrong way.     

 

And no, I won't use specific examples or dig up old posts to back up my ad hominem attacks on your character.  <--that's a joke, but really, I'm not going to be bothered to look this stuff up. 

 

Anyways, I read this:

 

 

Jon's a bit of a spaz and Garfield really hates diets.

 

[ManifestedISO]

Oh, great, now I feel like a patsy for liking Garfield as a kid. 

[Gromnir]

Oh, great, now I feel like a patsy for liking Garfield as a kid. 

well, the fact that you had garfield plush toys made us wonder if perhaps manifested were a girl when he was young.  'course, Gromnir had a pony, so am not certain we can be too dismissive.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

[BruceVC]

Oh, great, now I feel like a patsy for liking Garfield as a kid. 

That's impossible....you have  obviously  just forgotten I also had a Garfield as a  young person and you know what a real man I am...

 

You can always  tell a real man by the amount of respect he has on forums 

[Malcador]

Used to get those everytime there was a Scholastic book sale at school. Apparently Jim got Liz, pft.

[BruceVC]

Used to get those everytime there was a Scholastic book sale at school. Apparently Jim got Liz, pft.

Malc I need to ask you  that same question because you are honest and observant about certain forum behavioral trends 

 

 

Have you noticed I'm less condescending than when I was  first was active on these forums , now before you say " no you same  "  like last time please take your time and think about how I use to be ? 

[Raithe]

A nice little point on writing...

 

TOR - What We Don't Like to Mention

 

 

One of my favorite books is Philip K. ****’s The Man In The High Castle (an obvious influence on my own Osama), and one of the most important passages in that book comes very early on, on page 10 or so.

 

And then he thought about Africa, and the Nazi experiment there. And his blood stopped in his veins, hesitated, and at last went on.

 

It’s one of the most chilling lines in the book, and it’s important, I think, for what it doesn’t say. **** does go on—“That huge empty ruin” and a little bit more—but we don’t, I don’t think we do, find out exactly what the Nazis did, what the “experiment” was. We get hints, throughout the book, throwaway references, but what **** does here is to not mention, to allude without clarifying. Which is what makes it all the more horrific, of course. It is the thing We Do Not Like To Mention—something used, more recently, by Howard Jacobson in J, for instance, where it is the obscure “what happened, if it happened,” some sort of nameless Holocaust, too awful to ever mention.

 

I have often wondered about horror fiction. Lovecraft had it right about the need for “subtle suggestion—imperceptible hints,” yet so much of horror concerns itself with pulp tropes, werewolves, vampires, ghosts, that its very existence is comforting, that we are able to enjoy the sensation of fear by knowing this is not real, that it requires merely a momentary suspension of disbelief on our part.

 

John Clute defines much of horror fiction thus as “Affect Horror,” storytelling meant to “generate certain emotions.” I myself find striving for the effect of horror wearying as a writer, but it isn’t my natural milieu. One does not, it seems to me, get this kind of comfort from the passage above: for all that its setting is fictional, it is grounded in the real—in this case, of course, the Holocaust—and I find, increasingly, that my concern, as a writer, with the horror (the Horror) of the 20th and early 21st centuries owes nothing to Lovecraft and a lot to Hitler, nothing to King but a lot to Osama—and, perhaps, a lot to that short paragraph quoted above.

 

If I had to think of A Man Lies Dreaming, a novel as fantastical in conceit as anything else, with its unlikely noir vision of a gumshoe Hitler, it is as a comedy (for what is funnier than a Hitler without power?). And yet, what else but humor can underline the true darkness, the real horror? ****’s novel is not a comedy; like all his work, it is the study of small lives caught in webs of deceit against which they are powerless. The Holocaust obsessed him as much as it does me, though his interest was not as personal. He returns to it, not just in High Castle, but also in The Simulacra, where the Israeli government wants to use time travel to stop the Holocaust, while the US wants to strike a deal with Hermann Goering. His novels were unique in mentioning Israeli kibbutzim (where I myself was raised, a childhood as improbable as any PKD novel) existing in the future, in books such as Maze of Death and Ubik and others. And though he was far from a horror writer, he wrote about the horror in a way few ever had.

 

I don’t know if I would have been a writer if it weren’t for Philip K. ****, but I certainly wouldn’t have become the writer I am without him. And sometimes, I think about Europe, and the Nazi experiment there. And the blood stops in my veins, hesitates, and at last goes on.

[Malcador]

Malc I need to ask you  that same question because you are honest and observant about certain forum behavioral trends 

 

 

Have you noticed I'm less condescending than when I was  first was active on these forums , now before you say " no you same  "  like last time please take your time and think about how I use to be ?

Out of the blue, but, never would describe you as condescending in the past. I mean, considering the crowd of people here, you're not condescending.

[BruceVC]

 

Malc I need to ask you  that same question because you are honest and observant about certain forum behavioral trends 

 

 

Have you noticed I'm less condescending than when I was  first was active on these forums , now before you say " no you same  "  like last time please take your time and think about how I use to be ?

Out of the blue, but, never would describe you as condescending in the past. I mean, considering the crowd of people here, you're not condescending.

 

Thats interesting, I always assumed you thought I was condescending from that time 2133 called me " thoroughly revoltingly condescending "  and the reality is most of  my family are very condescending. They think they being clever but we cant tell the difference so I try really hard to not be condescending but its hard because as I said sometimes on forums I cant tell the difference   

 

In your view of the Internet and general debates do you think these forums are condescending? Its funny I cant read people on the Internet..so I have no idea if my view is biased. One thing about these forums is NO one likes admitting they wrong about anything

[Leferd]

One thing about these forums is NO one likes admitting they wrong about anything

What? Raise a white flag and surrender? NEVER.

 

 

I may be wrong, but dammit I will stay with this (sinking) ship!

 

...

 

I also used to get my Garfields through the Scholastic book orders at school. Do they still do that?

[Drowsy Emperor]

 

Malc I need to ask you  that same question because you are honest and observant about certain forum behavioral trends 

 

 

Have you noticed I'm less condescending than when I was  first was active on these forums , now before you say " no you same  "  like last time please take your time and think about how I use to be ?

Out of the blue, but, never would describe you as condescending in the past. I mean, considering the crowd of people here, you're not condescending.

 

 

 

 

I want out of this universe

 

LET ME OUT

Edited March 14, 2016 by Drowsy Emperor

[Hurlshort]

I also used to get my Garfields through the Scholastic book orders at school. Do they still do that?

 

 

They sure do.  It does bring in a tidy sum to help with classroom materials though.  

[BruceVC]

 

 

Malc I need to ask you  that same question because you are honest and observant about certain forum behavioral trends 

 

 

Have you noticed I'm less condescending than when I was  first was active on these forums , now before you say " no you same  "  like last time please take your time and think about how I use to be ?

Out of the blue, but, never would describe you as condescending in the past. I mean, considering the crowd of people here, you're not condescending.

 

 

 

 

I want out of this universe

 

LET ME OUT

 

 

Well I would think I'm much less condescending but its impossible to really know because its very hard to know when I''m being condescending unless people point it out...which I ask people to do yet only some people do

[Blarghagh]

Hey, glad I'm not the only one who liked Garfield as a kid. I think they're gateway comics - you get a few simple running gags quickly and start to understand how comics work as sequential art.

[Gfted1]

The Far Side was my comic of choice.

[Leferd]

The Far Side was my comic of choice.

Elitist snob.

[Blarghagh]

The Far Side was never translated into my language and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have gotten most of the jokes at the time I was into Garfield. I'm talking 6-8 here.