Gnosis

Spilling out over the side to anyone who will listen

Wednesday, December 18, 2002

What Good Are Words With Their Corners Knocked Off?

Dive Into Mark excerpts the best exchange from the The Real Thing, including this:

Words don't deserve that kind of malarkey. They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good any more, and Brodie knocks corners off without knowing he's doing it. So everything he writes is jerry-built. It's rubbish. An intelligent child could push it over.

The Real Thing is a fantastic play (we saw it on Broadway a couple of years ago with the spectacular Jennifer Ehle), and the exchange Mark quoted is the feeblest defense and best condemnation of hack writers mangling language in the name of "higher purposes" I've come across. Eric insightfully applies these lessons to code writing.

8:28:02 PM     What do you think? ()

What's In The Onion This Week?

Last week, President Bush said he would not rule out using nuclear weapons against enemies wielding weapons of mass destruction. What do you think?

"You know the scariest thing about this whole situation? Me, neither. It's impossible to decide."

Denise Traylor
Graduate Student

Cindy Lou Who Asks Why We're Invading Iraq

8:06:01 PM     What do you think? ()

Will There Be a Happy Ending?

Sarah is a lesbian living in Edinburgh, though she grew up in northern England. (Coincidentally, my mother's family--many descendants of which are openly gay--hails from those areas). Like me, she listens to Radio 1. And she takes gorgeous pictures of Northumbria. She tried everything to find a girlfriend (including giving straight women good reasons to turn--I'm convinced, but that probably wasn't her goal). She eventually found someone, but now has to deal with the complications of being part of a non-traditional couple. She's quite right that it's not fair. I wish her luck.

7:59:45 PM     What do you think? ()

Is One Moment as Good as the Next?

I've been trying to learn to be present in the moment to the point that I've found myself repeating the mantra "Right here, right now, everything is fine." Given some of the obsessional patterns of my mind, it's an ongoing struggle not to ruminate over things that have happened or worse, things that could happen. These patterns emerged last night as I was trying to fall asleep while fretting about the chunks of wall in our foyer that the plumber knocked out while working in our kitchen. As my wife rubbed my back with her warm, soft hands to calm me, I found it very difficult to let go of my thoughts and to simply feel that. So instead, I thought about something else.

There are moments that we try to savor and moments that we just want to pass. It's as if we have a level of contentment defined in our mind, and we hold on to the moments where our mood is above that line and we withdraw from the moments where our mood is below that line. So here's a thought experiment: Imagine yourself in that dramatic scene on your deathbed. If at that moment you could extend your life but only with the moments below that line, the moments that you wanted to pass quickly, would you do it?

8:56:19 AM     What do you think? ()